Fall Apart Again
by Cris
Summary: Plot AND smut? What is the world coming to? Lots of the familiar plot elements this fandom knows and loves in M stories, with a mystery from the future... PhilKeely of course.
1. Chapter 1

G'day! I've been on Fanfiction dot net long and long; since I was twelve or so...was it really so long ago? Anyhow, I'm a grad student now and I'm visting your nice little corner of the web for a fresh outlook in a new fandom. I don't bother reading fics rated anything other than M, so if this is similar to something rated K or whatever I do apologize. Not that I think it will be. ;-) I will warn you, though, that with my work you have to wade through actual plot to get to the smut. Sorry about that. It's just what I do.

* * *

It was dark, and someone was crying.

It was the same dream always, as she stumbled through the skeleton of a deserted house. Overhead, jagged strips of cloud covered the moon. A cold, fitful wind blew through the broken and crumbling walls. She tripped over a pile of charred wood, stirring up the smell of mold and old woodsmoke. The cries became more distinguishable as a noise very different from the wind. It was a child—a baby? She looked around, and could see the bony arms of winter trees through the remnants of the building. There was no one else here, no sign that anyone had been here for a very long time. But there was a child crying.

This had been a beautiful house once—big and grand and old, almost like a sprawling European estate. It was the kind of house people didn't build anymore. She saw remnants of furniture, rich and beautiful once, but the seats of the chairs were damp with moss and their legs were blackened, the fine wood ruined.

She was terrified, her heart beating much faster than its normal rate. She could feel adrenaline racing through her bloodstream, making her arms shake and her knees quiver with every slow, careful step she took. Why was she here? Why was this happening?

She stepped through a doorway that had not fallen, though the walls around it had long since turned to ashes. The crying was louder in here. She looked all around, but saw no child. Nothing was alive but the moss and grass, tendrils of pale vines that were growing down the crumbling walls. She sneezed. And the mold. Wasn't mold alive? She couldn't remember.

The baby wailed then, the sound almost right behind her. She spun quickly on her heels, grinding charred wood into ash beneath her shoes. There was no child, but she did see something. Her mouth formed a small O as she took two faltering steps toward a pile of rubble. There, buried in a heap, bleached by the weather, she saw the glimmering white length of several bones. The baby cried again.

The moon came out just then from behind a length of cloud, lighting up the dim corner of the ruin. She saw more glimmering bits of bone in the rubble, including what had once clearly been a jaw. She put her hands up to her mouth, inadvertently feeling the sharp curve of her own jaw beneath her skin. The half-buried bone was much smaller than hers. Tiny, even. Consumed by a horrible fascination, she knelt in the ashes and studied the little jawbone. It didn't have all of its teeth, and the ones it did have were little pearly things. They weren't the right shape, but smooth and rounded. The baby was still crying, and it was very close. She reached out a trembling hand, her lacquered fingernails dark against the fitful moonlight. She couldn't help herself. The tips of her fingers brushed the side of the tiny jawbone.

The wailing stopped.

Suddenly the moon came out fully from behind the clouds, and it was directly overhead. She turned around and her eyes opened wide. The entire room was littered with gleaming white specks of bone buried in the wreckage. Here and there long bones—arm bones? Leg bones?—lay exposed on the floor. Her stomach turned over. She was going to puke. Or scream. She felt the scream fluttering in her chest, a vocal extension of her hammering heartbeat. She scrambled to her feet, preparing to run—but where? Where would she be safe?

_With Phil_, she thought involuntarily, and suddenly in rich color the vision of a laughing, dark-haired boy flashed into her head. For an instant her world calmed. Then her mind remembered what the dream had chosen until now that she forget: _Phil was gone_. The vision vanished, leaving her colder than before. She turned to run, to vomit, to do _something_…

…and woke up thrashing in her own bed. It was light out. Her forehead was bathed in cold sweat, and she could still feel the adrenaline in her veins, her body responding to a fear she could not name.

"What do you want from me?" she murmured, though she was alone in the room. She hugged herself, cupping her sharp elbows in the palms of her hands. Dimly, she heard the sound of her mother's talk radio, the incessant babbling that had been the white noise of her life for as long as she could remember. The sound, so familiar, calmed her enough that she slid out of bed and reached for her robe, draped across the end of her bed.

Automatically she wondered if Phil could tell her anything useful about her dream. Maybe in the future some scientist or other had cracked the code on dream deciphering? Maybe he had a dream-decoding database locked away in his Wizrd somewhere? Stranger things had happened.

Then it hit her again, stopping her in her tracks as it had every morning. Phil was gone. He had returned to the future with his family over a week ago, leaving her very much alone. Oh, she had other friends. She had her mother. Tia on the phone and Via in school. But school was nearly out for the summer, and then she didn't know what she was going to do. Via would help to fill the long days, but they couldn't possibly spend the entire summer together. She took a deep breath, but it was shaky. She tried filling her lungs as far as they would go, but all it did was make her want to cry. Like the child in her dream. She couldn't hold her breath forever.

"Phil," she said, hoping that with practice she would be able to say his name without her voice shaking, hoping that someday she would be able to act normal when people asked her what in the world had become of the Diffys. She had to get used to it—she didn't have any choice.

_Did I ever have a choice?_ she wondered as she crossed the hall to the bathroom. She had dark circles under her eyes—clearly the recurring dreams were disrupting her sleep. She hooked her robe on the back of the closed door and turned on the shower, letting the water warm before she undressed and stepped into it. _Was there ever any choice for either of us?_ she wondered still, pouring rose-scented body wash on a natural sea sponge and smoothing the lather over her arms and shoulders. _Was I meant, somehow, to love this person who would so soon leave me? How can things like this be meant to be? How can anything?_

And where did her dream fit into all of it? She lathered her back, stretching under the warm flood of water, then drew the sponge in slow circles over her torso. The smell of roses, delicate and yet strong, flooded the bathroom. She examined her toenails carefully—they could stand repainting soon. Tonight, she thought. Maybe she would invite Via over for a home pedicure session. It would help keep her mind off the Diffys—and her dream. She massaged shampoo into her scalp, wondering for the umpteenth time exactly why she was having the same terrifying dream over and over again. It had started before Phil left, but she hadn't thought much of it. Now she wondered if the two were connected somehow.

_Probably not_, she thought, combing conditioner through her hair and then rinsing it. _I just think everything has to do with Phil right now. Will I always? Will he always be there in the front of my mind like this?_

She stepped out of the shower and wrapped a rose-colored towel around her dripping hair. She resented having these thoughts, thoughts that were new and deep. She wanted to think about what color to paint her toenails and if five minutes with her history book last night was enough to squeak by in class today. She wanted to think about the last dance of the year, and whether she would be able to convince her mother that she needed two new swimming suits this summer instead of the usual one-only rule. She didn't want to have to think about frightening dreams and what, if anything, they might mean. She especially didn't want to think about the fact that her junior year of high school was about to end without Phil. Or that the happiness-phase of her first love had lasted such a brief time.

She chose pale jeans and red ballet flats, with a buttery-yellow peasant blouse layered over a long-sleeved red T-shirt that clung to her skin. The bright colors, she hoped, would hide how she was feeling inside. She opened her wooden window blinds to see that a dull grey sky had settled over Pickford. It matched her mood.

_Why now, Phil? _she thought. _With a time machine, didn't your family literally have all the time in the world? Why did you have to go now?_

* * *

"You didn't back up far enough." 

"I know what I'm doing," Lloyd said. "Relax! I realize you think you single-handedly fixed the time machine, Pim, but I'll have you know I wasn't playing around when I said I was working on it." He slapped the dashboard affectionately. "I made some special modifications, too."

"You didn't." Barbara Diffy made a despairing noise and dropped her head into her hands.

"Thanks for the vote of confidence."

Phil didn't say anything. He hadn't said a word since his _uh-oh_ at least an hour before. He had dreamed while napping in the time machine, and while he couldn't remember just what had happened he knew that it had to do with Keely. She was scared, and hurting, and he couldn't stand it. The problem was, he didn't know what he could possibly do about it. He grabbed his Wizrd and accessed the Dr. Dream dream-decoding database. According to Dr. Dream, dreaming about a friend in trouble either meant that a friend _was_ in trouble or he had eaten too much oregano before bedtime.

"I didn't _eat_ dinner last night," Phil mumbled before returning the gadget to his pocket.

"You say something, sweetheart?" Barbara asked, turning in her seat to look affectionately at her only son.

"No…no, I didn't," Phil said.

"I'm just saying, is all," Pim said. "We left June fifth, at eight-thirty in the morning. You didn't back up far enough before you disengaged."

"How can you possibly know that from back there? And what's being a day or two late going to hurt?"

"You're talking about leaving Curtis on his own for a day or two?" Pim said. "You have _got_ to be kidding me."

"He goes off on his own all the time," her father protested.

"And we pay for it every time he does," his wife reminded him.

Phil's mind was racing. He barely heard his parents or sister talking. He couldn't do it. He couldn't go through with this. Keely was in trouble and he needed to know what was wrong so he could help her. But how to convince his parents? He thought about the sacrifice they had all nearly made for him by smashing the engine as it sat blinking in the kitchen. He wondered if they would be willing to do it again, after they had gotten this far.

"Mom," Phil said quietly. "Mom, I need to talk to you."

"I told you to go before we left, sweetie," she said, "but you can go when we stop to pick up Curtis. Honestly, you're supposed to start listening as you get older…"

"No, Mom," he said, trying to stop his voice from cracking. "Look. I know you're going to be upset, but I can't do this. I just can't."

Barbara turned around again. Pim was still arguing with her father, so they were safe for the moment. She looked at her son, who was rapidly growing up. For a moment her heart hurt. She saw that the sparkle had gone out of his dark eyes, and he was very serious about this. "I don't want to hurt you, or disappoint anyone. I'm really sorry. I thought I could handle it, but I can't." He took a deep breath. "I don't want to leave."

She saw that something had happened, something had changed since her children had fallen asleep behind her in the time machine. She eyed Phil, wondering what the chances were that he would be willing to tell her exactly what it was. She saw resolve in his eyes, but also questions. They were the questions she had always wanted to see in Lloyd's eyes, but never had. Her husband had always been so sure of himself, so sure of everything. Phil was different. She wondered, not for the first time, if what she had secretly wanted from Lloyd when they were younger had somehow managed to manifest itself in her eldest child. Phil was a deep thinker. He was serious and intense at times, constantly re-assessing himself and his surroundings. He threw himself entirely into everything he did, with passion and tenacity. At moments, Barbara almost felt herself in awe of these two people her DNA had helped create. Pim was a genius—an evil genius, but a genius nonetheless—with a biting sense of humor. What would become of her? Barbara didn't know. If they returned to their home in 2121, at some point Pim would probably be locked away for the public good. Certainly she would never be permitted to procreate. If they stayed, Pim would likely either instigate hostile takeover of Microsoft or stage a coup and overthrow the United States government. She wondered which would be worse.

And Phil? Barbara smiled in spite of herself, making her son raise a dark eyebrow at her. He would become a father. She didn't know what sort of career he might try, either in this century or the next, or if he would be any good at it. But she knew without a doubt that he was going to have children to raise someday. She could see it in his gentleness and playfulness, just as she had seen it in Lloyd when they were young. That was what had drawn her to him and kept her there, despite their differences.

"Mom?" Barbara snapped back to the present moment, Phil staring at her. "You were having a flashback," he said, "weren't you?"

She chose not to answer the question. He wasn't grown up yet, and it was her right as a parent not to tell everything. Instead, she asked a question of her own. "This is about Keely," she said with a sympathetic smile, "isn't it?"

Phil rubbed his messy hair with the palm of his hand. "Yeah…but…" He was finding it difficult to put this into words. Barbara hid a smile—he didn't quite understand himself what he was trying to articulate, which made her sure that it was important. It was amusing, however, watching him try to figure it all out. "I said that I told Keely how I felt and that it didn't make things any worse."

"You did," Barbara agreed.

"It's not true." He took a deep breath. "I didn't really tell Keely anything. She was on TV and there wasn't time, and…" His voice trailed off, but she didn't interrupt. "She's the only one we trusted with our secret."

"Very true," Barbara said encouragingly.

"And you've always seemed to like her."

"Of course."

He swallowed. She saw his Adam's apple jump, and he rubbed his palms against his jeans nervously. "I don't know how to say it," he said. "I really like her. Really. It's like I was waiting for this, somehow. Like we were supposed to get stuck in her time so I could meet her. I've never felt that about anyone else—none of my friends or the girls back home."

"Keely's a very special girl," Barbara said, trying to be helpful.

"Yes!" Phil said. "She is…and I…"

"You what?"

Phil eyed her, as if gauging how she would react to what he had to say. Barbara did her best to look caring and trustworthy. "I had a dream," he finally admitted. "I don't remember it all, but Keely was in trouble."

"Honey, sometimes dreams are just manifestations of our own current thoughts and emotions," she said. "They don't always necessarily mean anything no matter what the Dr. Dream database says."

"I don't want to go back to the future," he said stubbornly. "You were willing before to stay. Why not now?"

There was silence in the time machine. Pim was watching them suspiciously, and Lloyd was staring at his only son in the rearview mirror. Their eyes caught and held through the mirror.

"Dad doesn't want to leave," Phil protested. "Do any of us, really?"

"Yes!" Pim demanded.

"Son, it's more about what's right, and not about what we want," Lloyd said gently as he guided the time machine through the space/time continuum. "We rented this bucket of bolts for a family vacation, and it needs to go back to the rental company. Besides—we don't really belong in the past. That's why it's the past to us."

"How do you know?" Phil countered. "How do you know we were meant to have any future in the future? How do you know our futures aren't in the past?"

"Mainly because you're making my head hurt," Lloyd said. "Thinking about time travel always gives me a headache." He scratched his head. "I suppose we could always use the Giggle…"

"Basing life-altering decisions on the Giggle is a bad idea," Barbara said, putting a hand on Lloyd's leg to keep him from going to look for it. "You know its future predictions are notoriously bad!"

"Keely and I did it once and it seemed all right," Phil protested.

"That's because you Giggled her future, I bet, and not yours," Barbara said. "To the Giggle, her future _is_ the past."

"Well, can't we Giggle Blondie's future and see if Phil's in it?" Pim said.

"Not with any likelihood of success," Barbara said. "Phil's from the future, and even if his future did lie in the past, the decisions we make in the future will leave it open to change."

"Now you're giving _me_ a headache," Pim muttered.

"It's really very simple if you _listen to your mother_," Barbara said. "All you have to do is not base life-altering decisions on the Giggle."

Phil took a breath to try a different angle, but with a sudden violent lurch the time machine was sitting on the street in front of a familiar Craftsman home in a familiar neighborhood. "We're here," Lloyd said quietly.

Phil looked at his parents. "The time machine has to go back, but does it matter when? It's not like time is ticking by in the future without us."

"Technically it is…" Pim started, but stopped at the look her mother shot her.

"Not so that anybody'd notice," Phil said, "Especially since we're supposed to bring the machine back exactly one minute after we left, to avoid any time-overlap issues."

"That's true," Lloyd said. He looked at Barbara, who smiled. He wasn't sure what that meant.

"And I realize that keeping our gadgets hidden is a hassle, but is it really so awful here?" Phil looked out the window at the broad street with its smooth sidewalks, all the houses and the green lawns. Pim had been right—they hadn't gone back quite far enough. They had left early in the morning and it was now mid-afternoon. A school bus rumbled past them filled with children from the elementary school. A few birds called. It was quiet in the time machine.

"Phil doesn't want to leave, honey," Lloyd said finally.

"I got the message, thanks," Barbara said, smiling still.

Everybody turned to stare at Pim. She sighed. "I want to go home," she said, "but I guess I can stick it out a while longer. At least until Blondie gets tired of Phil and drops him like a sack of—"

"Pim!"

"I'm just saying." She undid her safety harness and opened the door. "I'm not looking for Curtis or unpacking."

Phil sat in his seat, stunned. He stared at his parents. Had they really agreed? Were they really staying? "Does this mean what I think it means?"

"I think it does, son." Lloyd brightened suddenly. "Anyone up for a rousing round of _Froggy Went A-Courtin'_? I put my washboard right in back…"

"I have to find Keely!" Phil said. His hands, frenzied with the sudden release of tension, were clumsy and he wrestled with his harness. His mother put out a restraining hand and he froze.

"Phil, this isn't permanent," she said. "The time machine still has to go back at some point. Please try to remember that."

"How long?" Phil asked, his stomach plummeting again. How much time had he really bought for himself and Keely? Days? Weeks? The summer?

His father had climbed out of the time machine, but he poked his head back in and looked at Phil's mother. There was a long silence. "I built an auto-return button," he said quietly, pointing to a small blue button on the control board. "Key in the right code and press the button, and the time machine should return itself."

"We don't have to decide right now," Barbara said, also quietly. "A lot of things could happen. And Phil—if we're ever found out, we have to leave." She unbuckled her harness and reached forward to cup his cheek in her hand. His face was hot, and not as smooth as she remembered. He was beginning to turn into a man and it frightened her. "Immediately. No big scenes. No returning. You know the rules."

"I know, Mom."

She sighed, but smiled. This felt like the right decision, though deep down she knew that even though they might talk about someday going back home, Phil never would do it. She wondered if that meant eventual separation of her family—permanent separation. "Your dad and I will unpack. You go find Curtis. When he's back and you've apologized for whatever damage he caused, you can go find Keely."

* * *

After checking the movie theatre, bus station, neighborhood park, Pickford County Courthouse, the little city jail, mall, hardware store, and hair salon with no luck, Phil finally decided to head home and see if his parents had unpacked the holographic tracking sensor yet. He was hot and sweaty from riding his bike, and for the first time he wished he had a car. He was old enough to drive, but hadn't seen much point in learning since the skyaks were so much faster and more fun. They too were packed, however, and Phil had been forced to use outdated technology on his hunt for Curtis. 

He dropped his bicycle in the driveway, noticing that the time machine had now been moved back to its old place next to the house instead of on the street in front of it. His parents must have finished unpacking. His heart was racing and all he could think about was finding Keely, but he wasn't quite willing to run to her house until he had at least located Curtis. He was very aware that his parents had done something monumental in allowing him to stay, and he wasn't about to make them regret it anytime soon.

"Mom?" he called, walking through the open front door. He closed it behind him. "Dad? Unpacked the tracker yet? I can't find Curtis."

He heard laughter from upstairs—female laughter verging on the demonic. Pim. "Come on up, loverboy," she said.

"Pim, I'm not really in the mood to be your bitch right now, so if you could…" He stopped on the third step. He recognized that smell. "Curtis!"

Phil ran up the staircase and into his room. Curtis was there, and it was apparent that he had been there for quite some time. The room was rank, the bedspread was wadded up in a corner covered with chicken bones, and the mattress had been torn apart. Stuffing and bits of sheet were everywhere. Curtis had bedsprings hanging from his ears.

"Curtis!" Phil said. "How'd you do all this in one afternoon?" The room stank, and Phil bet it wasn't just Curtis.

"Hate to break it to you, big brother," Pim said, "but it wasn't just one afternoon." She was at Phil's desk, and his laptop was on. She showed him the date on his desktop. "Dad screwed up more than we thought."

Pim was right. They had left the morning of June fifth. It was now nearly evening on June sixteenth. By their reckoning they had been gone five or six hours. By Keely's and Curtis', they'd been gone nearly twelve days.

"Isn't it strange," Pim remarked, swiveling idly in Phil's desk chair, "to think that for over a week we didn't exist?"

"That's not exactly how it works," Phil said. He cautiously walked into the corner and picked up his bedspread with just his thumb and forefinger. Chicken bones clicked together dully as they hit the wooden floorboards. Bits of gristle and globules of fat were stuck to the fabric, and it was covered in greasy stains.

"Where go?" Curtis demanded, scowling at Phil.

"Vacation," Phil said, unwilling to tell the truth.

"No take Curtis?"

"You wouldn't have liked it anyway," Phil said, dropping his bedspread to the floor again. It was a lost cause. He would have to start from scratch with this room. "You would have had to take a bath every day."

Curtis howled. "No bath!" he said, lumbering to the other side of the deconstructed bed. He eyed Phil mistrustfully.

"And there were no walla berries," Phil added.

Curtis' face wrinkled in an intense expression of disgust. "Not sound like vacation to Curtis."

"That's what I thought." Phil pulled his Wizrd out of his back pocket and turned it on. It automatically reset itself to the same date Pim had shown him on the computer. He scanned the room and all the grime and bones and bits of bed disappeared. He then selected his old bed in the Wizrd and inserted it into the room. Everything seemed back to normal, but the smell lingered. Phil sniffed, frowning. Then he remembered. "Curtis," he said, "out."

Curtis grumbled, but he went. The room smelled better.

Phil decided for the moment not to kick Pim out—if she was going to pull a prank she would do it whether he kicked her out of his room or not, and he was too anxious to see Keely to battle Pim for the moment. He followed Curtis down the stairs.

His parents were in the living room, straightening the couch cushions and dusting with their Wizrds.

"I'm going to find Keely," Phil said. He sounded out of breath and anxious even to his own ears. His mother smiled.

"Go ahead," she said. "Just be home before it gets too late—you have school tomorrow." She paused, and frowned slightly. "Curtis? Did you go anywhere while we were gone?"

Curtis grinned and showed them all one of Lloyd's credit cards. "Get food!" he said proudly.

"I'll go see what we owe the supermarket," Lloyd said resignedly. He snatched the card from Curtis as he left the room. Phil was already out the front door and sprinting down the sidewalk.


	2. Chapter 2

**Author Fun Fact: **I went on a trip to Africa a few years ago - I was gone about a month or so, all told, and had been busy getting ahead on schoolwork before that, so I hadn't been checking this site at all. When I got back, over half of my fics had been deleted and I had no idea where they'd gone. Finally after asking people in one of the writing forums I used to visit, I figured out that this site had decided to do away with their NC-17 rating and deleted all of the stories with that rating. I realize it was their right to do it, but I don't really think it accomplished anything. Some people (including me) never re-uploaded things, but others just changed the rating to R (which later became M, I guess) and kept the same content. Later my primary hard-drive crashed and I lost most of my fics permanently, including the bulk of a Harry Potter trilogy I'd been working on for over a year and was pushing 200 pages. Needless to say I was slightly upset.

Anyway, I remembered that I had forgotten to mention something. In my primary fandom we've been writing about a show that went off the air after two seasons, too, and we play around with facts from the show a lot if they don't fit our stories. I remembered, though, that not every fandom likes that, so if there are any purists around I am issuing both a warning and an apology at the same time: I'm pretty sure I'm skewing Phil and Keely's ages a little older than they are really supposed to be, and the inside of rooms and things might look different in my story than they do on screen. Initially I wanted Keely to be living with just her father, but I thought we saw enough of Mandy in the show that that might be pushing it a little bit.

* * *

He was almost to Keely's house before he realized that it was dark. He stood under the orange beam of a neighborhood streetlamp and paused to catch his breath. Keely's mother had this thing about dark and school nights. Normally she didn't care much what Keely did. With so much time spent on her job, Phil supposed, it was possible she just didn't have much time to worry about it. He'd never asked Keely, not wanting to tread on a potentially dangerous subject. But one thing was for sure—Mrs. Teslow was never going to let him in after dark on a school night. He'd have to find another way. 

Phil briefly considered going back home and either calling Keely on the phone or waiting until school in the morning. He wasn't willing to do either. He dug in his pockets, desperation making him clumsy.

"Perfect," he said, holding up a tiny canister of Invisi-Spray. He glanced around to make sure no one was watching, and for good measure he stepped out of the direct beam of the streetlight. Then he sprayed himself with the Invisi-Spray, making sure he covered everything. There'd be disaster if anyone caught a piece of shirttail or shoelace wandering around the neighborhood by itself.

He approached Keely's house quietly, a plan forming in his head. It did him no good to be invisible if he couldn't get inside the house, and he wasn't stupid enough to try to climb a trellis or drainpipe and hope for an open upstairs window. He had to create a distraction.

Slowly Phil walked into Keely's front yard. He could see her bedroom window, light glimmering out from between the cracks in her wooden blinds. He stared at it for a long moment, savoring the knowledge that she was just a few steps away and in a moment he would be able to see her again. For him it had only been close to a day without her, but the ever-present thought that that day was supposed to have been forever weighed heavy on Phil.

Phil stood in her yard, the light from the porch shining full on him. He felt a little unnerved, even though he knew he was invisible. It still didn't seem quite right to be out in the open. He had to somehow make Keely's mother open the door and come outside long enough for him to slip in. But how? Phil glanced around the yard and smiled. He lifted a lawn gnome and chucked it into the hedge next to the porch. Then he picked up another and hid it behind the big spreading tree in the middle of the yard. He hid all the lawn ornaments except the last flamingo. He took it with him up the porch steps and wedged its wire leg into a crack in the planking right in front of the door. Then he rang the doorbell.

He heard Mrs. Teslow's high voice muttering irritably as she walked to the door, and then he saw her peer through the little pane of decorative glass. She frowned and opened the door, but remained standing in the doorway. As quietly as he could, Phil slid to the side so he could jump inside the moment she gave him enough room. Just a few inches was all he needed…

"My _lawn!_" she cried, and took two steps forward. She plucked the flamingo from its spot on the porch and cradled it in her arms. "Pranksters!" she called out. "I'm setting up a security system!"

Phil was already inside and halfway up the stairs.

* * *

His heart was racing. This was it. He didn't know how Keely was feeling or what she had been doing for twelve days without him. He wanted her to be happy…but not too happy. If she were happy, did that mean maybe she didn't feel the same? That he was easy to get over? That she didn't need him the way he needed her? 

"Face it," he whispered to himself, "you want her to be miserable because then you can make her happy. It's rotten, but at least it's the truth."

Her bedroom door was closed. He wondered if it had a lock, if he had come so far only to be turned away by something as ridiculous as a locked door. He reached out a shaking hand and pushed down on the handle.

The door opened. Phil looked around. Keely was there, on her stomach on her bed, reading a textbook. She was wearing earbuds, her head bobbing a little to the music, her bare feet in the air. She hadn't heard him come in, hadn't seen the door open. Phil closed it as quietly as he could. He felt full of nervous tension, but at the same time he wanted to draw the moment out and make it last. He sat down on Keely's floor close to the bed, tucked his legs up so he could lean on his knees, and watched her.

She seemed fine, and there was no sign of the trouble that had plagued his dream. Her hair fell around her face in fat, loose ringlets. It shone like honey in the warm light of the room, a little darker than it did in the sunlight. She was long and lean, stretched out on a plum-colored bedspread, her book propped on the low footboard of her bed. Her mouth moved silently, and he bet it was song lyrics and not words off the page that she was mouthing.

Savoring the moment, Phil let his eyes drift around the room. Keely's room, like his, had hardwood floors. She also had a small window seat in a little tented window. There were inset lights overhead, but they weren't on. The warm golden light came from two floor lamps and a small table lamp by her bedside. On her low, long dresser there was a stereo covered with stacks of CDs, colorful piles of jewelry, and candles. There were candles on her windowsill, candles on the dresser, candles on a small bookshelf, candles on several wall-mounted shelves. There were candles on a vanity in the corner, and Phil smiled. He got up quietly and went over to examine it more closely. She had photos stuck in the mirror frame—a couple of Via, a couple of Tia, a couple of Keely when she was young. But most of them were of Phil. Phil and Keely at a school dance. Phil and Keely at the movies. Phil and Keely at the park. Just Phil. They were all funny pictures, photos of friends innocently having fun. Phil turned his head to look at Keely again. She didn't have any photos that looked like this—photos of that beautiful look when she lost herself in music. She looked happy and serious at the same time, her delicate eyebrows slightly furrowed in concentration, her painted lips soft as she mouthed the words. Hoping she wouldn't see, he quietly pulled out his Wizrd and scanned an image of her into it. Now, no matter what happened, this moment would stay with him forever.

Phil dug in his pocket and pulled out the Invisi-Spray. Visible again, he watched Keely cautiously. Her eyes were closed, intent on the music. He walked slowly to the edge of the bed and knelt down so they were at eye level. His heart was pounding in his ears and he couldn't seem to breathe correctly. "Hey," he said.

Keely screamed.

Phil toppled backward and Keely flew off the bed to the other side, holding her textbook like a shield. Her blue eyes went wide when she saw who it was. "Phil?" She pulled the earbuds out of her ears and the faint, tinny sound of music reached him. "How the hell…"

"I distracted your mom with a few well-placed gnomes, but now we're in for it!" Phil said, diving for the closet. He heard footsteps on the stairs, and buried himself in the farthest, darkest corner. Keely's closet smelled like lavender. He felt faintly like E.T. hiding in the closet, but didn't dare laugh. The door opened.

"Mom!" Keely's eyes were big, and they darted from the closet to her mother several times. She was a terrible liar. Phil prayed that nothing would give them away.

"What on earth—" Mrs. Teslow began.

"Sorry!" Keely said. "Got carried away. Looked out the window. Saw the gnomes?" she said hopefully, her eyes flicking back to the closet. Phil wouldn't have believed her in a million years, but her mother didn't seem to notice anything unusual.

"Yes!" she said. "Isn't it awful? I just don't know what's wrong with young people these days…" She shook her head. "But I fixed it, so don't you worry." She patted her daughter's arm, her eyes already distant again as she moved away. "Get some sleep…yes. For school…" Her mind obviously on things other than Keely, Mrs. Teslow left the room. She closed the door behind herself, and Keely visibly relaxed.

As soon as the door shut Phil was on his feet and out of the closet. Two seconds later Keely was in his arms, and she was crying. She did it quietly, for which Phil was thankful, but her body was hard and tense in his arms and she was twitching slightly with repressed sobs.

Phil brought one hand to the back of her head, cradling it in his palm, his elbow pressing on her shoulder blades. His other arm was wrapped around her back, bringing her as close to him as he could.

"Keely, it's okay," he said. "Please don't cry. Please don't."

She didn't seem to be listening to him—she hadn't stopped crying, at least—but slowly, one by one, he could feel her muscles relax under the silken cover of her skin. He closed his eyes and savored the moment. There was a damp spot on his neck where her tears had collected, but he didn't care. Keely breathed, her stomach fluttering against him.

It was hard for Phil to remember, sometimes, what a small person physically Keely was. Her personality was so quick and vibrant and loud that it seemed almost to make her bigger. It was only when she stepped close to him for a brief hug or sat behind him on a skyak, her arms locked around his waist, that he realized how small she really was. Her height added to the illusion as well, but Phil realized that when she was barefoot she wasn't actually taller than he was…so long as he was permitted to wear shoes. He smiled into her light hair and nuzzled the crown of her head gently. Her hair smelled warm and clean.

Minutes ticked by before Keely finally slowly pulled her head away from his shoulder and looked up. Her eyes were wet, but whatever makeup she was wearing apparently was waterproof because it wasn't running.

"Hi," Phil said, his voice little more than a whisper.

"Hi." She dropped her eyes, and just like that the awkwardness returned. Phil swallowed and took a half step backward, remembering that he still had no idea how to go about really being a couple with Keely. His feelings were so strong that he had believed the initial awkwardness would disappear quickly—he and Keely had been friends for a long time, hadn't they? They knew how to act around each other, didn't they?

Phil sighed inwardly, knowing now that these assumptions were utterly false. This was an entirely new game, one with rules he didn't know. He wondered if Keely was feeling the same, or if she knew more than he did about how this was supposed to work.

Keely's eyes darted around her room. All she had wanted for the past week and a half was for Phil to be back, and now he was. He was here, alone with her in her room, and her mother clearly had no idea what was going on. She looked at the bed, wrinkled where she had been studying, and chose to sit on the floor. She rested her back against the side of her bed and tucked her knees up close to her chest, staring up at him. He looked about as nervous as she felt, and she saw him swallow convulsively. He joined her on the floor.

"What are you doing here?" she asked. Her own voice sounded strange in her ears, and she pulled a dusty bear out from under her bed to hold. She pressed it against her chest, tucking its head under chin and wrapping her arms around its soft little body.

"I came to see you?" It sounded hopeful.

"I thought you said you weren't coming back."

The corners of his expressive mouth twitched with the sort of embarrassed mirth that came with an admission. "I threw a tantrum."

She laughed at that, some of the tension leaving her body. She was slowly remembering something her body had started to forget during the time apart—how comfortable it was to be with Phil. Some of her initial nervousness began to leak away. They had been friends before—couldn't they continue? Wasn't a relationship really supposed to be a friendship first and foremost?

Phil was relieved when he saw her smile and heard her laugh. Knowing that she had been put at ease helped him relax a little, too. "No one except Pim really wanted to go anyway," he said.

Keely blinked. This was something she hadn't been expecting. "You – you mean you're here to stay? You didn't just come to visit?" She didn't want to let herself hope, but she couldn't help it. Was he really staying? Had this past week and a half been no more than a bad nightmare?

"Well…"

Keely's heart fell.

"We're staying, we're staying," he said quickly, seeing the alarm in her eyes. "I just don't know for how long."

Keely closed her eyes. "Phil, I don't know if I can do this," she said. "How are we supposed to learn how to do this…this thing…if you're just going to run off to the future again?"

Phil held his breath and dared to reach forward with one hand and touch her cheek. His brown fingertips brushed the impossibly soft skin, drifted to her hairline, traced the delicate curve of her ear. She shivered, and he felt her eyes on his though he kept his gaze on his fingers. With the lightest of touches he dropped his fingertips to her earlobe and brushed the gold hook from which her earring dangled. He traced her jaw with a long, slow line and tucked her chin against the inside of his fingers for a moment, holding it cupped in the gentlest grasp. His eyes were on her mouth. He wanted to tell her he was never going back, but he couldn't do it. He couldn't quite bring himself to make that promise when he knew he might not be able to keep it.

"Phil…" she whispered, and he heard something in Keely's voice that he had never, ever heard before. He had no idea what it meant, but it sent shivers down his spine.

"It's complicated," he said, letting go of her. He didn't know what to do with his hands so he wrapped them around his knees. "Keely, we can't be found out. That's what it comes down to…I think." He thought back to what his mother had said. "I mean…the time machine is fixed. We're here because we want to be. But it's against future law to reveal ourselves."

"You told me."

Phil smiled his lopsided smile, one side of his mouth curving up before the other. "I trust you."

Keely smiled too, and Phil saw her arms tighten around her bear.

"But if anyone finds out—I mean, if _people_ find out, lots of people, we have to get out of here."

"Why?"

"Because it's against the law. Because it could change the course of history, which for us is the past. If we change the past, the future could be radically affected as a result. I mean, we could cease to exist."

Keely felt a ripple of fear, remembering how they had met Phil's great-great-grandfather recently at school and Phil's meddling in his life had actually caused Phil to nearly disappear. She looked at him intently, trying to reassure herself that he was real and solid and wasn't going anywhere. It wasn't working as well as she wanted. She scooted closer to him on the floor.

Their arms touched. Keely froze for a moment as she felt Phil move his arm, but she relaxed when she realized that all he was doing was sliding it around her back. She leaned into him. He smelled oddly—not like she remembered. She put her nose against his shoulder and breathed in.

"It's the recycled air inside the time machine," he said. "Smells like—"

"Cornfields," she interrupted. "After the rain."

"If you say so."

They were silent for a long moment. Phil's hand was curled around her waist, his arm firm across her back. Keely let the bear fall to her lap and put her hand over Phil's on her waist. She could feel the hard little spikes of his knuckles against her palm. He linked fingers with her and squeezed them gently. With the other hand he took the bear from her lap and set it on the floor, propped up against her little bedside table.

"So you're staying as long as you don't get discovered?" she asked.

"I think so," Phil said.

"Can't you be more sure?"

He squeezed her fingers again. "No," he said. "I'm still a minor, and it's not up to me."

"I hate this."

"I know." Phil looked at her, at the shine of lamplight on her light hair and the graceful curve of her shoulder under her sleeve. He'd won the fight and they had returned, but had he made the wrong decision? Was being apart better, maybe, than being together with the constant threat of separation? He hadn't thought so before, but if every day was going to be this awkward from now on he didn't know quite what to think.

"It's a lot all at once," she said quietly, resting her chin on her knees. "It's like we finally got to this place we wanted to be, and then you were gone. Now you're back, but you're telling me you could disappear at any time. Just like that." She snapped her fingers.

"No, not just like that." He let go of her and turned his whole body so he was facing her. "We have the rest of high school for sure—as long as nobody finds out my family is from the future."

"How do you know?"

"My parents aren't that cruel."

Keely smiled, and turned her head to look at him. She rested the side of her head on her knees and rocked a little. "No," she agreed, "I guess not." She paused. "I like your family."

"Even Pim?" he asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Pim is…colorful. Was she bent on world domination in the future, too?"

"No, just mine."

Keely smiled again, a warm smile that let him know they were on the road to being okay again. Phil felt like a big weight had been lifted off of his shoulders, and he leaned forward and pressed his forehead gently against hers.

"I'm glad you're back," Keely said. She put her hand on his cheek. Phil tilted his head slightly and touched his mouth to hers. Her lips were velvety and trembled against his. He moved his mouth slowly, gently, feeling as if he were in a dream or underwater, his movements slowed by something beyond his control. Keely's hands were moving in his hair; she slid them down until her index fingers hooked in the little indentation behind his earlobes. He kissed her again, slowly, positive she could hear his heart pounding.

Before he'd left Phil's only intention had been to touch her once, to give her the first kiss she had asked for and not received. He had been out of breath from running, terrified by all the eyes of the other students in the room, his insides full of the ache of knowing this would be the last memory they shared. He had grabbed her before he could think about being afraid, and pressed his lips hard against hers. Comparing it to this feeling now, it didn't seem like much of a kiss at all.

Or maybe just a very different kind, he thought as Keely's lips parted slightly and their mouths locked gently in an altogether new sensation. It was warm and silky and a little wet, and as Keely breathed he caught the sharp, clean scent of cucumber. He was afraid to wonder what _his_ breath smelled like.

The sound of water rushing in the house pipes made them jerk apart. Phil took a deep breath and looked at Keely. "My mom," she whispered. Her eyes were big, her face pale. Phil inadvertently glanced at Keely's alarm clock. He'd been gone a long time.

"I should be heading home," he said. "I was only supposed to stay a few minutes."

"I'm glad you came," she said. "Thank you, Phil."

"Me, too." He didn't know how to do this, how to say goodbye when he knew neither of them wanted to. It was only for the night, but that didn't make it much easier. After being separated with the thought that they would have to learn to live their lives apart, it wasn't easy to say goodbye again. Staying, however, was unthinkable. Even were he willing to bring the subject up—which he manifestly was not—his parents were waiting for him at home.

"Can we just take this one day at a time?" she asked. "I don't want to go on constantly worrying about whether the future is going to swallow you up one day."

"Sounds good to me." Phil reluctantly stood and offered her his hands. She took them and he leaned back, levering her to her feet.

"Phil?" Keely said, and he met her eyes.

"Yeah?"

Abruptly, she stepped forward and gave him a hard shove with both her hands that belied the delicacy of her frame. He toppled backward, caught off guard, and landed hard on her bed. She crossed her arms over her chest and looked satisfied. "Don't you _dare_ ever scare me like that again. Got it?"

"Got it."

* * *

His parents were waiting for him when he got home, sitting across from each other at the kitchen table. 

"Am I in trouble already?"

His mother plunked a teabag into a steaming mug and offered it to him. Phil didn't like tea but he put his hands around the cup and took a seat.

"You're not in trouble," Lloyd said, "but we did want to talk to you."

"How did it go?" Barbara asked. "Was she mad?"

"I don't think so." Phil looked at his father. "Girls are unfathomable. How do you do it?"

"You get really, really good at pretending," Lloyd said knowingly.

"Look, you're a smart young man," Barbara said, "and we trust you, Phil. But we wanted to remind you of a couple of things."

"Like what?" Phil asked suspiciously. He severely doubted that his parents were going to lay down a new set of rules now that he and Keely were officially dating, but he couldn't think of anything else they could have been referring to.

"This century isn't the future," Lloyd started.

"No kidding?" Phil said. "I had no idea."

"You're laughing now, smarty-pants, but if you don't pay attention you won't be later," Barbara put in. "Look, Phil, you and Keely had such a comfortable friendship that a lot of this century's rules about young people were kind of relaxed."

"You got away with more because you were just friends," Lloyd agreed.

"That's probably going to change now," Barbara said. "I know you don't see why it should, and the only real reason we can give you is that when you got involved with someone from this century you inadvertently agreed to play by the rules of her time. Not ours."

Phil narrowed his eyes. "What are you saying, exactly?"

"Just to be careful. Watch what other young couples do. Talk to Keely about it, if you can."

"If I can?"

Barbara smiled. "You might find that talking about personal things gets a little more difficult when you're dating. It's not that you won't be as close to Keely as you were—it's just a different kind of relationship. It's something you have to learn."

"We just don't want you to get into trouble with Mrs. Teslow or any of the schoolteachers or administrators," Lloyd said. "Particularly Vice-Principal Hackett."

"You're telling me to be responsible," Phil said flatly. He felt slightly offended that his parents wouldn't assume he could be responsible without the reminder.

"We're telling you to be responsible by Keely's standards—not yours." Barbara put her hands flat on the tabletop and spoke frankly to her oldest child. "We realize you won't understand why people in this time feel the way they do about young relationships. Frankly, we don't either."

"How do they feel?" Phil asked. "What, exactly, are you telling me to do?" He thought for a second and amended his last statement. "_Not_ to do?"

"I honestly don't know, son," Lloyd said. "You may think your mother and I are ancient, but we're not _that_ ancient. We didn't grow up in this time, either."

"The best advice I can give you," Barbara said, "is to re-learn how to talk to Keely. And remember that you can always talk to us. We may not always be able to help you, but we'll always listen."

Phil smiled. "Thanks." He remembered the stark look of disbelief on Keely's face when he had once asked her whether she wouldn't rather talk about her problems with her mother. She hadn't been able to believe that he was serious when he admitted that he talked with his parents about difficult things all the time. Maybe this was part of the cultural chasm his parents were talking about, part of what he and Keely were going to have to learn to navigate if they were ever going to have any sort of future.

"Keely can too—if she wants to," Barbara said. "When you confuse her or make her mad. She might want someone she can talk to without worrying about giving our secret away, and somehow it doesn't seem like she really communicates with her mother very well."

"You think I'm going to make her mad?" Phil asked. "First you tell me to be responsible and now—"

"It's inevitable, son," Lloyd said, rising to his feet and putting a hand on Phil's shoulder for a moment. He laughed. "You've got a girlfriend—you're going to make her mad at some point. That never changes, so get used to it."

Barbara rolled her eyes and collected the mugs for washing. When she turned away, Lloyd leaned closer to Phil and whispered, "When you need it, I've got a whole list of ways to say you're sorry. Just try not to use the same one twice in one week. Women have _long_ memories."


	3. Chapter 3

**Fun Fact of the Day:** Curtis is likely a Neanderthal (correctly pronounced _neander**t**al_), a name given to bones of early hominids found throughout northern Europe and Asia. There is great debate among the anthropological community as to whether Neanderthals are direct evolutionary ancestors of modern-day humans or a branch of the evolutionary tree that went extinct. Neanderthals are shorter and heavier than modern-day humans, but were probably much stronger. Like in the episode where Curtis has to go to the dentist, one of the ways anthropologists classify hominid skeletons is with the teeth.

* * *

It was dark, and someone was crying.

_Not again._ There was a small part of Keely's mind that rebelled against the dream, but it could do nothing but dread what she now knew was coming. She opened her eyes in the ruin, terrified that she would again see the white gleam of moonlight on weathered splinters of bone. She had held to a foolish sort of hope that maybe, just maybe, having Phil back would stop these dreams from coming. Obviously, she thought as she stepped carefully through the crumbling walls and furniture, she had been wrong.

She didn't want to return to the room with the tiny jawbone, but against her will she felt her feet slowly moving her in that direction. She passed through a room that had obviously once been a kitchen. A black stove still sat in a corner amid the silent shadows, the door to its wood-burning insides gaping open. On a table that had not yet crumbled she saw a ceramic mixing bowl full of ashes and other detritus. She reached out and traced a hand across the tabletop. She could still see in its sturdy wooden surface the marks of kitchen knives. How long ago a cook had chopped carrots and onions on this surface she couldn't know, but the table remembered.

On a wall that was taller than most a picture still hung. Stepping closer, Keely saw that it wasn't a painting at all, but needlepoint. Someone—the lady of the house, perhaps—had patiently stitched thousands upon thousands of tiny hatches into the sooty linen. Probably it had been white as snow once, the black threads a stark contrast, but no longer. _Bless this house_, it read, in elegantly flowing script. Clearly, she thought, that request had been denied.

"What do you want from me?" she asked, her voice quivering in the cold wind. The house was silent for a moment. Then the child wailed again. "I saw that place already," she said. "What do you expect from me?"

Unwillingly, she stepped toward the long hallway that would lead her to the room with the baby's skeleton. It enveloped her in darkness, the walls high enough to block most of the fitful moonlight. She tripped against something sharp and fell, gripping her bare foot with a small yelp. Bits of wood and plaster crunched as she rolled to a sitting position. She cradled her foot in her hands, finding the spot that had been hurt. Her fingers came away wet.

Almost in her ear, the child cried. She jumped…

…and woke up in her own bed again. Delicate, early sunshine was streaming through her open window.

Keely took a deep breath and levered herself out of bed, prepared to shut the window. She'd forgotten that she had opened it the night before to let Phil climb down the porch roof and drop to the lawn below.

She felt a sharp stab of pain when her feet hit the floor and she immediately sat back down again. Leaning forward to inspect it, she saw a clean, shallow gash two inches long. It was red against her fair skin, a remarkably straight line just below the sharp curve of her anklebone. Just where she had been cut in her dream.

Keely sat very still for a long moment, then tore back the blankets on her bed. The sage green sheets below her plum bedspread were smeared with small amounts of blood. She must have made those smears unintentionally, thrashing in her dreams.

_I'm scared_, Keely thought, staring at the stained sheets. _Not freaked out. Not tripping. Dead scared._ She tore the sheets from her bed and took them down the stairs to the laundry room. Before her mother could see the stains and ask what on earth had happened, Keely sprayed them with stain remover and bundled them into the washing machine. She turned it on with a sigh of relief and went back upstairs.

The cut stung in the shower, but she rubbed salve on it in before she slid her feet into her shoes and it stopped hurting. She wondered if she might be turning into a sleepwalker—could she possibly have hurt herself sometime during the night without knowing it? Could her dreams have somehow found a way to merge a physical reaction to real pain into the false storyline?

Slowly she began to relax. Phil was back. Everything would be okay, and soon the strange dreams would stop returning. They had to, didn't they? She reasoned with herself as she dressed, finally convincing herself that there was nothing to be afraid of. How could she be anything but happy, with June nearly here and a summer with Phil to look forward to?

Keely went downstairs, unsurprised to find that her mother had already left for the day without a word. She glanced idly at the calendar tacked next to the whiteboard where they left each other messages. At the Diffys' house, family messages ran something like: _Gone skyaking with your father. There's casserole in the refrigerator—or was when we left. Don't let Curtis eat it all, if he hasn't already. We love you!_ The message currently on the Teslows' board was one word: _Recycle_. Keely's mouth curved up in a small, wistful smile. She longed for the kind of family Phil had. Even with Pim as a little sister, she still felt he was luckier than he knew.

The calendar next to the whiteboard held a better surprise. At the end of June, Keely's mother had penciled in the annual national realtors' conference. She didn't attend every year, but it looked like she was going this time. _NRC,_ the note read, _June 28 – July 3. Omaha_. The airline name and number were penciled in as well.

Keely smiled. She didn't feel so lonely at home when her mother wasn't actually there. It felt normal not to talk to anyone when she was alone, and she could ask Via to spend the night without worrying about disturbing her mother. She took the little blue plastic recycling tub out to the street, returned for her backpack and purse, and left again, locking the door behind her. She paused for a moment on her porch. School was in one direction and Phil's house was in another. Usually he showed up to walk with her, but he wasn't here. Had their routine somehow changed without her knowledge? Should she go see if he was still at home? Had he overslept?

"Hey."

She whirled around and saw Phil sitting on the porch swing.

"I _told_ you never to scare me like that again!" she said. He stood up and opened his hands to her.

"I'm sorry! I thought you saw me. I saw you."

She looked at him. There was a book on the swing, his familiar red-and-grey backpack on the ground next to it. He had obviously been waiting for her.

"Why didn't you ring the bell?" she asked. "Come inside, if you were early?"

"I never have before."

"Does that mean you don't want to?"

Phil picked up his bag and tucked the book inside it, then swung it over his shoulders. "Wouldn't your mom think it was weird?" He paused. "Have you told her about us?"

Keely shook her head and let him take her hand. She laced her fingers through his and they stepped off the porch together. "What was there to tell? We were together and then you were gone…"

Her voice trailed off, and Phil knew that she was still feeling some of the confusion and loss from the time he had been gone. He wondered how deep an impact it had left on her, how long that week would continue to hurt. Probably for a while—maybe even a long while. A week and a half wasn't so terrible a time to be separated, but the thought that it was permanent lent a more disturbing facet to the situation. Something in their relationship had been broken by that betrayal, though he knew that Keely didn't truly blame him for leaving. Somewhere deep down, though, he knew something had been lost. "I'm sorry," he said. "My dad was a little sloppy when we came back. Pim realized he wasn't being careful, but I don't think even she realized how long we'd been gone until we were actually back."

Keely stopped walking. "You mean it wasn't a week and a half for you?"

Phil shook his head, suddenly realizing that the truth might be dangerous ground. "With all the back and forth, in real time it took the better part of a day."

Keely shook her head. "So all that time I was miserable—to you it was like it never even happened?"

Phil pulled her closer, and she stepped willingly into the circle of his arms. He noticed with a kind of fatalistic humor that she was again taller than he was. "We're back now," he offered, not able to think of anything else to say.

"I'm not mad," she said, breathing him in. His body was hard against hers, and when he moved his arms or shifted his weight she could feel the individual muscles flex and stretch. He smelled like himself again—warm and clean, with faint traces of commercial fabric softener and deodorant. She was glad he didn't use aftershave; she hated how tacky it smelled. "It's just hard to get my mind around. There was time I had that you didn't."

"If you want to look at it another way, think of the years you lived before my family got lost here. We didn't exist then either, technically."

"This time-traveling thing still gives me headaches."

"Try not to think about it." He paused. "Were you really miserable?"

She lifted her head and their eyes met. "Yeah."

"I really am sorry," he said quietly. "My parents gave me the opportunity to stay the night before we left." He gave one brief laugh. "Everyone _except_ me tried to smash the time engine that night. I thought I was being responsible by telling them not to."

"What made you change your mind?"

Phil took a deep breath. He considered telling her about his dream, but decided against it. There wasn't any point in worrying her, since it was obvious that there was nothing wrong. "You."

"But what changed?"

A neighbor's dog barked, and they both jumped. Their eyes scanned the neighborhood, but they didn't see anyone except a couple of other students on the other side of the street. In the distance they heard the rumble of the recycling truck. Phil let go of her and they started walking again.

"We actually came back twice," he said. "See, I was waiting for you to come and say goodbye. But you didn't."

"I was going to," Keely interrupted. "You got there just as I was about to leave."

"Well, you would have been too late, then," he said. "We left without saying goodbye, but I couldn't stand it. I couldn't go without letting you know how I feel."

Keely smiled, swinging their linked hands gently as they walked.

"So we came back—just for a minute—and I said goodbye."

"I remember that part," Keely said, feeling color rising in her cheeks. The first few days after he'd left had been very difficult. The looks from the other students when they saw her walking alone, the questions from everyone about where Phil had gone—somehow in the midst of an incredible well of loss she had to pretend that the Diffys had had to move unexpectedly and Phil's disappearance had nothing to do with their burgeoning relationship. She felt immense satisfaction that the suspicious whispers she had heard in the hallways would be silenced today when Phil returned.

"Me, too," he said, and Keely turned her head to see that his cheeks had gone red. She felt a rush of affection for this awkward, nervous boy that was only strengthened by the fact that he, like her, had no real idea of what he was doing.

Phil cleared his throat. "_Anyway_," he said, "we left again. And I thought I was going to be able to do it. I thought it was the right thing to do."

Keely took a breath, and Phil paused, waiting for her to speak. "Did it feel like the right thing to do?" she asked finally.

"No," he answered truthfully. "But sometimes things don't, even when they are. Especially the hard ones."

"Yeah."

"We were several hours out when we realized we'd left Curtis behind."

Keely's mouth dropped open, and Phil couldn't keep his eyes off of the glimpse of her white teeth and pink tongue. He wanted to kiss her again…

"You did _what_?" she demanded, reluctantly pulling him back to the topic.

"We were all thinking about other things!"

"Obviously, but still."

"Well, we had to go back for him. And I realized I wasn't going to be able to do it again. To leave. You know how getting out of bed is the worst part of having to get up in the morning? And if you get up and then go back, it's twice as hard the second time?"

"I _like_ getting up in the morning."

"Of course you do. Anyway, it was like that, but worse. Much worse. I couldn't do it, Keel."

She smiled at the nickname. He wasn't the only one who used it, but he was the only one who made shivers run up her spine at the sound of her name in his mouth.

"So you threw a tantrum?"

He grinned. "Essentially. I told them I didn't want to go back to the future and they didn't either. Except Pim."

"And Pim?"

"For once, is being flexible."

They had reached the lawn of H. G. Wells and turned up the walkway to the main doors. Phil could feel everyone's eyes on them and took a tighter hold of Keely's hand.

"You're going to have to think of something to tell everyone," she said in a low voice, her eyes staring straight ahead.

"What did you tell them?"

"That you had to move suddenly. Something about your dad's job."

"Keel, my dad works at the hardware store."

"So? Maybe it's all a cover and he's really a government agent. Nobody _here_ knows the truth."

"My dad? A government agent?"

"Why not? Hackett thinks you're aliens. Why can't other people think you're government agents?" She clapped suddenly, and he realized that she was already off in her own imaginative world. "Maybe you're not really Diffys at all. Maybe those are just code names." She nodded seriously at him.

"Please. Lloyd Diffy? That's a terrible code name." Phil relaxed a little, ignoring the stares of the other students.

"That's the beauty of it. If it was a good code name, people would guess right away."

"My dad is _not_ a government agent."

"Fine. Ruin a perfectly good story. Good luck coming up with a better one."

They reached Keely's locker without mishap, and Phil watched her twirl the combination and lift the latch. Stuck to the inside of her locker door were dried flowers and pictures of her friends, photos of models cut out of magazines, and the engraved salt shaker she had mistakenly received as part of a gift for him.

"I needed it more here than I did at home," she said when she saw what he was looking at. "People kept asking questions like they thought I had scared you away. Or like Phil Diffy maybe wasn't the clean-cut boy they thought, and you got bored and split."

She wasn't looking at him, and her voice had gone expressionless. Phil wondered just what she wasn't telling him about those comments from the other students. He thought he had a pretty good idea and he didn't like it at all.

"Keely—" he started, but she shook her head minutely and put two fingers over his lips. The gentle pressure made him stop.

"Phil. I know this is kind of new for us, but I'm not some little girl who needs to be protected all the time. I can fight my own battles when I need to."

"But—"

"I mean it." She looked at him, and he saw how earnest she was. In her big blue eyes he saw traces of a strange old sadness he knew nothing about, and it startled him.

"What's this all about, Keely?"

"Just what I said. Leave it alone, Phil. Okay?"

There was nothing else he could do. "Fine," he said. If she wasn't going to talk to him, he couldn't make her.

* * *

Phil looked up from his book and found himself staring at Keely's stomach. 

She was lying upside down on his bed, her head hanging almost to the floor, her light hair touching the ground. Her shirt had ridden up, exposing a line of skin from her belly button to the base of her ribs. He peered over the edge of his bed. She was absorbed in a book.

"What are you doing upside down?" he asked, sliding his knuckles along the velvet of her side. She squealed and jerked upright, her face red.

"Sorry."

"Don't tickle me!" She shook her head and blinked, then reached down to retrieve her textbook. "I was concentrating."

"I thought girls liked to be tickled."

"No." Keely frowned. "Yes. No."

"Well, which is it?"

She thought for a moment, then stretched out and curled into his pillow. Phil settled back next to her and she flipped through her book, finding the bent pages where she had dropped it. "Put it this way," she said, "would you ever—ever—tickle Pim?"

Phil made a choking noise. "And lose my arms below the elbow? Possibly be turned into dog chow? End up under the lawn? Be—"

"I see you get the point."

Phil thought for a minute. "I don't think I do."

Keely pulled a set of index cards out from between two pages of the book. "Quiz me, okay?"

"But I don't get it."

"That's something I don't hear you say every day." Keely smiled and moved until her body connected with his. He took the cards from her and dropped them on the floor, leaned forward, and kissed her. She turned fully onto her back, her arms winding around him and pulling him closer. He hovered over her, holding himself up with his arms.

Keely breathed slowly and deeply, feeling the soft slide of his mouth against hers, reveling in the sensations of warm and wet, smooth and sleek. She could hear Phil breathe, feel the individual breaths against her skin. He was beautiful even so close, his eyes closed, his face a mask of concentration, his long eyelashes brushing her skin when he moved his mouth to her cheek, her ear, her jawline. She opened her eyes just enough to see the outline of his soft mouth, the spattering of dark freckles across the bridge of his nose. All the time they had been friends she had wanted this and been terrified of that want, terrified that he didn't feel the same or somehow they wouldn't fit together as more than just friends. But they did fit. She smiled, tracing her palm slowly down his back and raising her chin so he could reach her neck. He kissed her skin, paused, and then she felt the warm touch of his tongue.

She felt adrift—not drowning, but floating in this bed that smelled like Phil, covered by his hard, compact frame. She buried her nose in his dark hair, breathing in the smell of his styling gel. When they were like this she didn't feel nervous or afraid. She didn't wonder what Phil wanted or expected from her, didn't wonder what she herself was willing to give. She didn't worry about the distant, frightening future that might swallow him up at any moment, didn't worry about summer or the next school year or graduation. It was enough to trust that Phil's actions meant he wouldn't let them be separated if it was in his power, and to revel in the attention.

Keely opened her eyes to find Phil's mild brown eyes close to hers, watching. She put a hand on his cheek, stroking his sun-darkened skin with her thumb. She kept her nails short for playing her guitar and was glad of it—she was afraid long nails would get in the way when she touched Phil.

"What are you thinking?" he asked. He turned his head and kissed her fingers. She played them over his lips, making him smile. "Honestly."

She took a deep breath. Talking about sensitive things was still more difficult than she could have ever imagined. "I was just thinking."

"Yes," he said, and he propped his head up on his elbow next to her. He stretched his free arm over her waist, playing with the hem of her shirt. "About what?"

Keely felt her heart begin to beat harder as she watched his long dark fingers playing with her shirt. He was remarkably good at making her want him. "Your parents."

"My parents." He didn't sound like he was buying it.

Keely took another breath, knowing that this wasn't how she had pictured them having this conversation but it was too late to back out now. "Yes."

Phil's thumb found its way under the hem of her shirt, tracing small, slow circles against her skin. "What about them, exactly?"

"Well. This." She stopped his hand as if to force him to pay attention, but in truth it was her own attention that she was trying to preserve. "We've officially been dating for a while now."

"Very true."

"But they still let us come up to your room to hang out. With the door closed. Like it's no big deal."

"Why should it be a big deal?" Phil sat up, realizing that maybe, just maybe, they were going to have the conversation they had been dancing around for weeks.

"How isn't it?" Keely grabbed her history book and pulled it against her chest, wanting something to hold onto. "Don't you think they wonder what we're doing?"

"No. Look, Keel, I think I know what you're trying to get at, and I think it's another future-culture thing."

"What do you mean? How is being the parent of a teenager any different in this century?" Keely sat up, hugging her book.

"Well, why did you think my parents wouldn't let us be alone in my room anymore?"

"To keep us from being too physical?"

Phil smiled. "And if you take that to its logical conclusion—to keep us from having sex."

Keely opened her mouth and closed it again. She could feel her face growing red and she shifted nervously. Suddenly sitting on Phil's bed didn't seem like such a good idea, but she couldn't think of a way to get up without looking awkward. "I…guess," she said.

"And why wouldn't they want us to do that?"

She stared at him. "Are you crazy?"

"Can't you answer the question?" Phil put his hands on her knees and squeezed them. "You all—all of you present-day teenagers—know adults don't want you to do it, but do you know why?"

"I-I guess because bad things can happen," she said.

"Bad things can happen when you drive cars, too, but teenagers still do that."

"But you can learn how to be responsible in a car."

"And you can be responsible having sex, too." Phil scooted closer, his dark eyes holding her gaze and not letting her look away. "I know you're embarrassed, and I'm sorry. In the future we're not so weirded out about talking like this. It's normal."

Keely dropped her eyes. She couldn't help it. "Phil," she said, "I really like you, but I can't do this right now. Maybe you're not weirded out talking like this, but I am." She stood up, her history book still tucked tight to her chest. "I'm going to get some water."


	4. Chapter 4

**Shameless Plug: **If there's any Aly & AJ fans here (and I'm guessing there are), you might want to give a listen to Brandi Carlile. She's a friend-of-a-friend with a folky-rock sound signed to Columbia Records. She's a little more earthy, her writing is a little more polished, but the sound is similar.

**Author's Note:** I thought the comment about underwater basket-weaving was maybe a little too ridiculous, but then I thought about how much ridiculous stuff was in the original show and I decided that if paid screenwriters can be ridiculous then I can, too. I don't think it's any more off-the-wall than Grenemia, personally.

* * *

Keely started down the stairs, wondering whether she ought to go to the Diffys' kitchen to get water like she had said or whether it might just be better to duck out the front door and be gone before Phil noticed. She heard clattering in the kitchen and almost decided to avoid whoever it was, but at the last minute she decided that being a complete coward now would just make her more afraid to deal with her problems later.

"Hey, sweetie," Barbara Diffy said when she saw Keely. "Looking forward to the end of the school year?" She was mixing something in a bowl.

"I think so." Keely paused. "I was just getting some water."

Something in her voice must have given away her unsettled frame of mind, because Phil's mother stopped stirring and really looked at her. Keely stood, unable to move under the older woman's gaze, and resisted the urge to bite her lower lip. She tried to school her expression to something approximating normal. How did you look normal?

"Why don't you sit with your water for a minute?" Mrs. Diffy said finally. She didn't sound stern or angry, and Keely unfroze enough to slide onto one of the stools at the kitchen counter.

"I'm not really thirsty," she said, putting her book next to a carton of eggs and gripping the edge of it.

"Somehow, I didn't think so." Mrs. Diffy smiled, and she put a floury hand on Keely's cheek for a moment. "I know I'm not your mother, sweetie. But do you want to talk about it?"

"What is it with you Diffys and _talking_ about everything?" Keely wailed. "How do you know when there _is_ anything to talk about? Is everyone in the future a mind reader?"

"No." Barbara cracked an egg into her bowl and dropped the eggshell back into the carton. "If we were, we wouldn't need to talk so much." Keely watched as the bright yolk slowly disappeared into the lumpy, pasty mixture in the bowl. "But sometimes talking to someone else helps you understand your own feelings better." She added another egg. "Did you have a fight with Phil?"

"Not really." Keely toyed with the frayed corner of her history book. "I'm really glad you all decided to stick around, but it's not always easy to understand you."

"So you didn't have a fight, but this _is_ about Phil?"

"Well, sort of. Mostly, I guess, it's about me." Keely stared at her round pink fingernails. "I really like him, but that doesn't mean I'm not scared."

"Growing up can be like that, no matter what century it is," Barbara said. "Hand me the salt, please."

Keely gave her the round cardboard carton, and Mrs. Diffy measured a cup of it into her bowl. Keely opened her mouth to question it, but changed her mind.

"We talked to Phil when you first started dating," Barbara said, stirring the salt into the pasty dough. "We explained to him that it wouldn't be easy trying to have a—well, an intimate relationship—with someone from the early twenty-first century."

Keely rested her chin on her fist dejectedly. "I didn't think this time thing was going to be a big deal," she said. "I know technology changes and everything, but I didn't think emotions did, too."

"They don't," Mrs. Diffy said, "and I'd be willing to wager that Phil is just as afraid as you are. But _culture_ changes, Keely—maybe even faster and more often than technology. Phil did most of his growing up in a culture where it was normal for teenagers to have sex."

Keely choked. "Since when were we talking about that?" Talking to Phil's mother about not understanding the Diffys was one thing, but talking to her about something so intensely personal that she couldn't even talk to Phil about it was not something she was comfortable with.

"Sweetie, when were we not?" Barbara sprinkled a teaspoon of sugar into her bowl and added a shake of paprika and cinnamon. "Humans have evolved to the point where we believe we can control every aspect of our lives and environments. In the future, that's largely true. But reason and intellect can only go so far to counter the inner forces of instinct and emotion." She took a large knife and a chopping board and started dicing cloves of garlic without peeling them. The whole room filled with the sharp-sweet smell. "That history book of yours doesn't tell you everything about the past, you know. It glosses over the interesting parts."

"Like what?" Keely plucked a leaf from a bunch of cilantro on the countertop. She twirled it between her fingers, watching the flat green leaf spin.

"People used to get married and have babies at your age," Barbara said, examining the garlic on her board. It was diced in uneven chunks, some big and some tiny. She scraped them all into her mixing bowl. "Back when human life expectancies were much shorter teens _were_ adults, in a manner of speaking. Later, we came to understand that the teen years are an odd combination of child- and adulthood. You have adult bodies, more or less, but brains that are still learning and growing."

"I thought you said reason and intellect had nothing to do with it."

"No, I said that they can't fully counter instinct and emotion. In teens especially, because you have adult instinct and emotion but your brains haven't grown enough to fully understand and accept it yet."

Keely put the leaf of cilantro in her mouth and bit down. The bright, clean flavor filled her mouth. She held it on her tongue like a kiss. "I've heard that some scientists believe teenagers have bad judgment ability."

"That's part of it, but it's not your fault. It's the way your brain works—we've cracked the neuro-code in the future, and we understand these things. Once mainstream culture accepted the fact that teens couldn't help being irresponsible they started working to make expectations a lot more reasonable." Mrs. Diffy poured her lumpy dough into a casserole dish and dumped a can of breadcrumbs on top of it. "Instead of saying that the decision to have sex was an irresponsible one, people started working on ways to make it safer." She eyed her creation. "What do you think?"

"Are you going to bake it?"

"Well, yes." Mrs. Diffy slid the dish into the oven and returned to the counter. "You see, Keely, Phil grew up in a time where people don't get sick from having sex. We can't get rid of disease, but in 2070 Dr. Virgil Loftman won the Nobel Prize in medicine for turning STDs into UBWTD's."

"Which are…?"

"Underwater-basket-weaving-transmitted diseases. The diseases still exist, but they are now transmitted by unprotected mutual underwater basket-weaving—not an activity kids in the future really go for."

"You're kidding, right?" Keely picked up the salt and flour, putting them back in the right cupboard. Mrs. Diffy put the egg carton back into the refrigerator without taking the empty eggshells out.

"I never kid about underwater basket-weaving."

Keely laughed in spite of herself. "I wasn't really worried about getting sick," she said. "I mean—" She paused, remembering that she didn't really want to talk about this. But, she considered, was it that she didn't want to or that she thought she couldn't? That it would be too embarrassing?

Mrs. Diffy used her Wizard to zap the counter clean and pulled a bag of snap peas out of the refrigerator. She put her arm around Keely and they went out the back door and sat on the porch steps. "Yes," she said, "I know. And you're right—even in this century, if you've never had sex with anyone else you don't have to worry about that."

Keely took a pea and worried the pod with her fingernails. "But I do have to worry about other things."

Barbara bit into a pea pod. "Well…"

"Well, what?"

"I assume by 'other things' you're talking about pregnancy. Honestly, sweetie, you have _got_ to learn to face these things and talk about them honestly. The words themselves can't hurt you."

"But they're scary," Keely said in a small voice. She sounded like a child even to her own ears, and she didn't like it.

"They won't be if you practice," Mrs. Diffy said. "Just promise me you'll try, okay?"

Keely nodded, and split her pea pod down the middle. The tiny peas inside were lined up like elementary students.

"In the future, that's not a problem either," Mrs. Diffy said. "On their NIRD-day, all baby boys in the future are injected with a chemical that renders them unable to have kids."

"Have kids or have…sex?" Keely cringed when she heard the word come out of her mouth, but she had promised she would try.

"Good girl. Have kids," Mrs. Diffy said. "Then, when they decide someday that they _want_ to start a family, they go to the doctor to get the antidote." She paused. "Let's not go into where babies come from in the future. It's complicated."

Something crashed in the garage, and Curtis wandered out wearing a lampshade upside-down on his head. He took a fistful of peas out of the bag, sniffed them, and made a face. "There's wild boar for you in the fridge, like always," Barbara told him. He dropped the peas back into the bag and climbed past them into the house.

Keely was quiet for another minute. Mrs. Diffy let her think alone and busied herself tossing the peas Curtis had contaminated out into her flowers.

"So you're telling me that in the future parents don't care if kids have sex," Keely said finally. She still hesitated, but she had said it again. Barbara thought that was a step in the right direction. "You're giving us permission?"

"No," Barbara said quickly.

"Thank goodness," Keely said. "I thought the world had turned on its head!"

"I'm not giving you permission because if I did your mother would hear about it," Barbara said, "and I'm willing to bet she doesn't feel the same way Lloyd and I do. I don't want to be put in that position."

"Why would I tell my mother about it?" Keely asked, sounding genuinely appalled at the idea. "About _any_ of it?"

"Even if you didn't, I'm not so sure she wouldn't hear about it anyway," Mrs. Diffy said. "People talk, Keely. At school, at their jobs, in the grocery store— The point is that I don't think age has very much to do with maturity." She took Keely's face gently her hands and looked her in the eye. "Look at me. You and Phil obviously care a lot about each other. Whatever you want to call it—like, love—it's obvious that you feel it. It's _been_ obvious for a long time. And we understand that you're still kids and you make mistakes, but we also understand that you're growing up and you need the chance to have these experiences. For the most part, you and Phil are pretty responsible. We trust you." She let go. "That doesn't mean you shouldn't be careful, though. Just because you're safe from getting pregnant or sick doesn't mean you're safe from getting hurt." She stood up with her empty produce bag. Keely looked up at her, and for a moment Mrs. Diffy wondered just what sort of relationship her son's best friend-turned-girlfriend actually had with any of her family. This talking thing seemed new to her. "Being a couple changed a lot in your friendship, but sex, Keely, changes _everything_."

* * *

The sun was slowly disappearing below the rooftops of the neighboring houses. Keely leaned against the railing on the Diffys back porch, staring at the sky as it turned red. She could smell dinner cooking from more than one house, could hear the sound of Pim arguing with her father inside. Every so often there was a flash of cool blue light from the kitchen as Mrs. Diffy busied herself with more dinner preparations. Phil hadn't come outside looking for her, and she was grateful for the chance to sit by herself and think. She wanted to see him before she went home, even if it was just for a minute, just for the chance to make sure he wasn't upset with her for running. But as evening quiet crept over the neighborhood she felt a strange yearning for solitude.

It would be summer very soon. This would be her last true summer, with one more year of high school looming before her. This would be the last summer to think about nothing except having fun with her friends and making the days—and nights—last as long as possible. She would be getting ready for college next year, probably working some sort of job next summer, and then what? College would give her at least four more years before she had to really think about being an adult, but it was still a bigger step than she had ever taken before and she didn't know if she was really ready for it.

Across the street a neighbor came out on her front porch and called her children in for dinner. Keely smiled as she heard the thuds of small sneakers running up the street, saw the brief glow of light as the front door swung wide to let them in. For a fleeting instant she wished she could somehow turn back time and go back to that age, even for a little while. She acknowledged that she had been luckier than most, growing up in a gentle town where she had always been safe and protected even when her parents weren't around, but even so growing up was harder than she ever could have imagined.

The back door opened and Curtis wandered onto the porch, a large drumstick that obviously had not come from a chicken or turkey clutched in his fist. He squinted down at her, then crouched on the porch next to her. "Phil friend sad," he said. He offered her the drumstick.

Keely grinned. "Not sad," she said, pushing the drumstick back toward him. "Just thinking."

"Think too much."

"Maybe."

"Think about Phil?"

Keely opened her mouth to deny it, but suddenly she wasn't so sure Curtis was wrong. Her fear of her own future, of growing up, was normal, she supposed. It was also tied into how she felt about Phil, about the way even thinking about him made her feel inside. How when she was around him the fine little hairs on her arms and the back of her neck stood on end, her entire body hyperaware of his presence. It was the knowledge that these were not the feelings of Keely-the-child that frightened her, really. She blinked. Was _that_ what she had been missing, what had been bothering her? Was it maybe not really about sex at all, but about growing up and losing that large piece of her childhood?

"Yes," she said finally. "I think I am."

"Phil upstairs," Curtis said. He made as if to rise. "Curtis get."

Keely caught his arm. "That's okay, Curtis," she said, "you don't have to do that. He'll come down if he wants to."

Curtis looked confused. "You say so."

"I say so." Keely watched him cross the lawn and enter his garage, saw the flicker of the lights turn on.

"You say what?"

It was Phil. The last pale ribbons of pink and orange were fading from the sky, leaving a green tinge in the west. The rest of the sky was deepening to cobalt, the stars appearing. Phil sat next to her on the porch and touched her shoulder hesitantly. Keely took his arm and wrapped it around herself, cuddling into his side. She felt the tension leave his body, and knew that he had been worried that she was upset with him.

"I'm sorry," he said into her hair. He was sitting a step above her, and Keely could tuck her head easily under his chin. She pressed her ear against his soft cotton shirt, hearing the inner workings of his body with a gentle fascination. She heard the bass rhythm of his heartbeat, the liquid rush of air in and out of his lungs. They were the same, really, in so many ways. Just masses of muscle and bone and blood. So vulnerable under their skins—in more ways than one. Was it possible to feel safe and protected with someone, and yet love them for their vulnerability at the same time? Keely closed her eyes against the warm glow from the kitchen windows, against the deepening night, against the future she knew would come whether she was ready for it or not. His arms were strong around her, his hands gentle as they rested open on her skin.

All she had ever really wanted was to be a normal teenager with a normal boyfriend she could go to dances with and gossip about. Was it such a crime to want to have fun? She didn't want to have to think about these bigger things. But it wasn't Phil's fault, really, that their relationship was so complicated. He hadn't asked to be stuck here, hadn't asked for the strange series of events that had led up to this moment. Neither of them had. But, sitting on the dark porch of Phil's house with the mundane sounds of his family going on with their daily lives inside, his arms holding her so close that she wasn't entirely sure where her body ended and his began, she knew she regretted none of it. Their futures would come, and they would learn to deal with them. Together. Keely smiled. Growing up wouldn't be nearly so frightening if she had Phil to share it with, and it didn't seem like his parents—his mother, at least—were thinking about separating them any time soon.

"No," she said finally, "I'm sorry. You didn't do anything."

"I shouldn't have pushed you to talk to me when you didn't want to," Phil said. "My mom warned me that this wouldn't be easy for you."

"I know," Keely said. Reluctantly, she sat up. Phil was a dark shadow framed by the light from the house. "We had a long talk this afternoon."

She couldn't see his face, but from the tone of his voice she knew the flash of panic that she would have seen—the same flash of panic she saw whenever she mentioned having spent prolonged periods of time with Pim or Phil's father. "And you're still here?"

"Yes." Keely put a hand on his cheek. He was warm and solid, and she was starting to feel cold from sitting so long as darkness fell. "And I think I figured something out."

"What?" Phil took her hand from his face and held it.

"I think I figured out what I'm afraid of."

"I thought you already knew that."

"No. Yes. Well—it's complicated." Keely felt the familiar uncertainty rising in her chest as she tried to articulate what had seemed so simple such a short time ago. Resolutely, she continued. "I don't think I'm really afraid of…you know…sex," she said. "Well, I _am_—but I don't think that's mainly what I'm afraid of."

"What, then?" Phil asked.

"Growing up."

Phil reached out and gathered her close again, and Keely didn't resist. She felt his voice vibrating gently in his chest and throat as she rested against his shirt. "We all are, Keel," he said quietly. "It's kind of the same thing, isn't it?"

"Yeah." Keely swallowed. "I mean, when I think about you…like that…they're not the thoughts of a little girl anymore. And when—" Keely hesitated, but pushed on. "When we do it for real, it's not something we can take back." The word she was looking for rose up in her head, but she didn't say it aloud. _Irrevocable_. It sounded more frightening than any of the other words she didn't want to say.

The fact that Keely had said _when_ and not _if_ was not lost on Phil. "Keel?" he said. She didn't respond, but he could feel her listening. "I want to tell you something. And—I don't want you to think you have to say it back, because that's not why I want to tell you. But—"

Keely raised a hand and gently pressed two fingers against his soft lips. Instantly he was silent. She turned so they were facing and moved her head very close to his, so she could see his face. Her hand moved from his mouth and she smiled gently. "Phil, please don't."

"Why not?"

She saw the confusion on his expressive face and felt a sudden upwelling of tenderness for him. He was possibly the sweetest boy in the world. "Because," she said, "we already had a big milestone today, I think. I don't want those two issues tied together, necessarily."

"Oh." His face cleared and he leaned forward and brushed the lightest of kisses against her lips. "All right."

Keely could never let him pull away after a kiss like that, and she slid her arms around his shoulders. Her mouth sought his, and as his arms locked around her waist, pulling her tight against him, she felt her body respond powerfully. It was frightening, but even more exciting. Liquid fire seemed to run in her veins as she surrendered to the inevitability of it all. Phil's tongue stroked hers, his arms held her steady. Keely slid her cold hands under his shirt, feeling the velvet touch of hot skin. She ran her short, smooth nails lightly down his back, making him shiver. Delicately, with the tips of her fingers, she felt the hard little knobs of his spine that were just discernible as he bent to kiss her. His mouth moved to her ear and he took the lobe between his teeth, tugging gently. She heard a metallic click as the hook from her dangling earring knocked against his teeth. Her hands found his shoulder blades up under his shirt, so different from her own. She pressed her fingers into the muscles of his upper back, finding small knots and sensitive spots.

She felt Phil's fingers brush against her ear and she stilled for a moment. Amusement made her giggle when she felt him remove her earring before he returned his mouth to her earlobe. He turned his head and nuzzled the sensitive spot behind her ear, breathing a slow rush of hot air against her skin.

Suddenly the porch light snapped on. Keely winced, and Phil's head whipped around to look back at the house. Pim's face was framed in the window and she smiled her all-too-innocent smile and waved at them before dropping the curtain again. Phil groaned and dropped his head onto Keely's shoulder. She squeezed him tightly for a long moment before letting go.

"You don't know how lucky you are to have them," she said, accepting the earring he offered her and putting it back in.

"Sometimes I need reminding," he said, helping her to her feet. "Are you staying for dinner?"

"Am I invited?"

Phil laughed. "Keel, I think at this point you're pretty much unofficially part of the family. My mom's used to feeding you." He rubbed her bare arms, which had broken out in goosebumps. "Unless you would rather go home. Is your mom waiting for you?"

"No," Keely said, "but I _did_ watch your mother cooking dinner this afternoon. The old-fashioned way."

"Uh-oh."

"Yeah."

Phil smiled. "So stay anyway, and we'll go to Rome for pizza after."

Keely kissed him gently. "How can I argue with that?"


	5. Chapter 5

**Author's Note:** I didn't mean for this to take so long to update, but I got sick and then I didn't like the first version so I rewrote the second half three or four times. Also, for anyone reading who might not live by an ocean, a rashguard is a kind of shirt that surfers wear, though they've caught on with other watersports too. They can be long or short-sleeved, and they offer UV protection and (as the name implies) keep you safe from getting cut up on underwater rocks and coral.

**Quote of the day:** "You have to keep your eye on the job because words are very sly, the rubbishy ones go into hiding and you have to dig them out...only a genius can afford two adjectives to one noun." - Isaac Babel

* * *

Mandy Teslow sat on her porch, looking out at the neighborhood. She was leaving for Omaha in the morning and had taken the afternoon off to pack. The overcast weeks of June in California had already passed, leaving the sky hot and blue. She gripped a tumbler of iced tea in one hand, the day's mail in the other. The house was quiet—Keely had not yet come home from school. Mandy frowned. What time did H. G. Wells get out? She checked her watch. Should Keely have been home by now?

For the first time in she didn't know how long, Keely's mother leaned back against the wooden slats of her porch swing and really thought about her daughter. When was the last time she had actually seen Keely and not just evidence of this other person who lived in the same house? Mandy remembered folding hot pink and lime green laundry from time to time, remembered hearing the background noise of pop music and television as she worked on projects she had brought home from the office. She remembered leaving notes about taking out the recycling and emptying the dishwasher—notes that would be gone the next morning, the tasks completed. She could visualize gleaming blond hairs left in a brush in the upstairs bathroom. But when was the last time, Mandy Teslow wondered, that she had actually looked into Keely's eyes? What color _were_ they? How tall was she now? When was the last time she had gone to the doctor's office for a checkup? Had there been any immunizations they had missed? Cavities unfilled? Injuries untended? What was her grade-point average? Was she thinking about college?

Mandy leafed through the mail, separating the bills from the junk. Keely had always been so self-sufficient that it didn't seem so very terrible to leave her alone so often. She had good friends to keep her company, enough money every week to keep her quiet, and what else, really, did teenage girls need? Mandy figured that if Keely were having problems she would have heard about it. Why bother the child, she thought, with unnecessary parental concern?

But where was she? Mandy checked her watch. It was after four in the afternoon, and school was clearly over by now. She put her tea aside and pulled her cell phone out of its little carrying case. Flipping it open, she scanned the list.

Keely wasn't on it.

Mandy Teslow looked again. Had she made a mistake? The house telephone was there, but not Keely's phone. Did Keely _have_ a phone? Yes, because Mandy paid the bill every month. For the first time since she could readily remember, she felt a rising sense of unease about her daughter. Where was she? Was she at a friend's house, perhaps? Mandy stood up, her iced tea forgotten, and walked to the sidewalk. She looked up and down the street. Where would Keely go? Would she be studying with that smart boy—her math tutor? The Diffy boy?

Mandy started down the sidewalk, accustomed to walking neighborhoods. She gazed at the familiar houses, all of them well-kept, with trimmed hedges and neat green lawns. When had she started to lose touch with her daughter, she wondered as she made her way down the street to the Diffys' house. She had always worked a lot—selling houses allowed her to meet many of the new people moving into Pickford. She thought vaguely that on Lifetime single mothers always had deep and complicated relationships with their daughters. Did it count as complicated when you woke up one day and realized you hardly knew her?

Nearing the Diffy house, Mandy Teslow heard a sound she thought she recognized. It was a girl laughing—Keely. Relief that she had been located warred with a strange, impatient sort of irritation new to Mandy. She paused unobtrusively on the sidewalk just at the corner of the Diffy lot, hidden behind a tall topiary shrub shaped like a bear. The house looked normal enough—just a typical Craftsman on a typical suburban street. Aside from the various topiaries decorating the lot, it looked perfectly ordinary.

Just then Mandy caught the sound of Keely's laughter again, followed by a high-pitched shriek. The front door of the house burst open and Keely ran out, the Diffy boy behind her. She was wearing a bright pink bikini top and short denim shorts folded down at the already-low waist. Mandy stared at her daughter as if she were seeing her for the first time as the Diffy boy caught her around the waist and swung her around, hiding behind her. A younger girl with long blond hair stepped onto the porch holding the garden hose—had they dragged it all the way through the house from the back yard?—and sprayed them. Keely shrieked again, but the sound was mixed with laughter from all three of them.

Two tall boys rounded the corner of the house at a run, then, and charged up the porch steps. One was skinny and awkward, his movements quick and uncoordinated. The other had bleached-orange hair and was much more muscular. They grabbed the girl with the hose, wrestled it away from her, and picked her up like a sack of potatoes.

"Hey!" It was Mrs. Diffy, and she came out onto the porch with her arms full of towels. "When I said to take it outside, this wasn't exactly what I meant." She draped a towel over both of the boys' heads. "Seth. Owen. Escort Pim to the _back_ yard, please. Thank you." The boys hefted their prisoner, who was yelling in language she could only have learned from cable, and went back around the corner of the house.

"Thanks, Mom." The Diffy boy took a towel she held out to him and draped it over his shoulders. Mandy stared at her daughter. When had she started to dress like that? When had she started to _look_ like that? She didn't look like the little girl Mandy still saw in her mind's eye when she thought about her daughter. Keely looked like a young woman—a beautiful one—and suddenly Mandy didn't think she liked how close she was standing to the Diffy boy. What was his name? Phil.

"Just remember, son, you asked for it," Mrs. Diffy was saying. She snapped opened the last towel in her arms and slipped it around Keely, something Mandy couldn't remember doing since Keely started kindergarten. "You taunt your sister, you're going to pay."

"It's not fair," he said.

"I think that's pretty much the way it works in most families," Keely said. Mrs. Diffy put her arm around her in an easy, casual way that Mandy suddenly envied. What was this stranger doing mothering her girl? Mandy wondered just how much time Keely spent over at the Diffy house, and whether she and Phil were perhaps more than just casual study partners. She frowned as she saw Phil reach for Keely's hand, saw the easy way Mrs. Diffy relinquished her hold and sent the two of them before her into the house. From the back yard Mandy heard a shriek, presumably from the other girl—Pim.

Slowly, feeling suddenly far out of her depth, Mandy entered the Diffy yard and walked up the porch steps. She rang the doorbell, not really knowing what it was she was going to say or why. Mrs. Diffy opened the door with a warm smile.

"Mrs. Teslow!" she exclaimed. "Ms. Teslow? I'm sorry—I'm not quite sure which it is."

"Either is fine," Mandy said, allowing Mrs. Diffy to guide her into the house. The hardwood floors were wet and the hose was, in fact, snaking all the way through the house from the back door. "I was just looking for Keely."

"The kids are all out back," Mrs. Diffy said, leading her into the kitchen.

"I must say I got worried when Keely didn't come home from school," Mandy said, gazing around the kitchen. She didn't see Barbara's surprise when she made the statement, didn't see her swallow a comment or two of her own.

"Well, she's been here all afternoon," Barbara finally said, opening the back door. "Let me get some lemonade—you do like lemonade, don't you? The kids do." She turned away, leaving Mandy to step out onto the back porch by herself.

The back yard was full of teenagers. They had spread out a blue tarpaulin on the grass and hosed it down with dish soap and water. Just as she stepped outside the tall boy with the bleached hair took a running dive and slid on his stomach across the long blue tarp. The tall, awkward boy was there, too. Mandy saw the blond girl that had been forcibly restrained sitting in a lawn chair with a tinfoil tanning reflector. She was actively ignoring a dark boy moonwalking around the chair. The only person Mandy recognized other than her daughter was Tia, the girl who had been Keely's best friend since they were little. Neither of them looked so little anymore.

There was also another girl, with a porcelain complexion and long dark hair, an impossibly short blond boy who looked at least two years younger than everyone else, and a freckled girl with a ponytail who wouldn't stop bouncing. There was a radio playing on the porch, but the kids were making so much noise that they couldn't possibly hear it. Mandy turned her attention back to her daughter just in time to see her step close to Phil and kiss his mouth. Mandy felt her own mouth drop open at the proprietary way his hands closed around Keely's bare waist, the way her daughter's index fingers curled in the belt loops of his shorts, holding him close.

Barbara glanced out the doorway, a pitcher of iced lemonade in her hands, and saw the direction of Mandy Teslow's gaze—and the object of it. She didn't know exactly how much, if anything, Keely's mother knew about her relationship with Phil, but she bet from the expression on the other mother's face that it wasn't nearly enough. Barbara ducked back inside and took the telephone off the hook. With so many kids around it was too risky to use the Wizards. She dialed Pim's phone number and watched out the window as her daughter dug her phone out of the bag next to her chair.

"Pim, I need you to do us all a favor to try and avoid a scene."

"I like scenes," Pim said, in the bland tone that meant she was not feeling particularly helpful.

"Even scenes that ruin a perfectly good party?" Barbara asked.

"Once again it's up to Pim to save the day," Pim said. "What is it now?"

"I need you to take that bucket next to you and dump it on Phil and Keely."

"Really." Pim sounded interested, which was always dangerous. "Why?"

"Because Mrs. Teslow is here," Barbara said, trying to keep her voice down, though she doubted that Keely's mother would have heard a word she was saying anyway. "Pim, just do it!"

"Hold your horses, I'm going, I'm going," Pim said. She snapped her phone shut and levered herself off the chair. She picked up a red plastic bucket sitting next to the tarpaulin. Sudsy water spilled over its edges. Walking awkwardly under its weight, she conveyed it carefully across the yard and spilled it over her older brother and his girlfriend.

Keely screamed and ducked, an instant too late, and the soapy water washed over her and Phil.

"Pim!" Phil darted after his sister, who ran behind Owen and kept him between her and her brother. Keely stepped toward the porch, her shoulders wet and gleaming, and spotted her mother.

"Mom?" she said, as if she didn't quite believe what she was seeing. "What are you doing here?" She picked up one of the many towels thrown across the porch steps and pressed it against her cheek, wiping the water out of her eyes. "Is something wrong?"

"You tell me," Mandy said, reaching out and taking Keely by the wrist. She saw the surprise in her daughter's eyes and wondered, in the back of her mind, when she had last actually touched Keely. The delicate bones under her fingers didn't seem any different than she remembered, but how long had it been? "Why didn't you tell me you were going to a party after school?"

Keely blinked. Behind her the sounds of the other teens dancing and sliding continued, but the porch was suddenly thick with silence. She allowed her mother to pull her up onto the top step. "Mom," she said gently, "there was no school today. Summer started over a week ago."

Mandy opened her mouth but nothing came out. She could feel Mrs. Diffy hovering in the background and suddenly she resented this stranger she had seen casually offering affection to her daughter. What kind of person did that, anyway? Certainly she had never bothered Keely's little friends by trying to mother them.

"Do you want to tell me what's going on?" she finally settled on saying, thinking probably that asking questions at this point was by far the safest thing to do.

Keely glanced at the crowded yard, then back at her mother. Her face was still a mask of confusion. "A party?" she said hesitantly. It sounded as if she was hoping this was the correct answer.

"You know perfectly well that that's not what I'm talking about," Mandy snapped. "Why didn't you tell me where you were going? When you'd be back?"

"I _never_ tell you where I'm going," Keely said. "Why should today be any different? If you needed to talk to me, you could have called."

Mandy swept a long glance from her daughter's blond head to her purple toenails. "And where, exactly, do you keep your phone with an outfit like that?"

"In my bag." Keely bent and retrieved her kitty-cat bag from the porch steps. She reached inside and presented her pink phone outstretched on her palm as if this held all the acceptable answers. "See?"

Mandy couldn't admit that she didn't know the number to call that telephone. She had the sinking feeling that Mrs. Diffy did. Certainly Phil did—or ought to, if Keely's kiss was an indication of anything. She looked involuntarily at the long sweep of her daughter's legs, the graceful curve of her spine. _How in the world,_ Mandy thought to herself, _did I produce something so tall and swanlike?_ A more disturbing question forced its way into the front of her mind—_Who is this young woman standing in front of me?_ Where did she come from, and when did the Keely she knew disappear? Mandy looked into her daughter's wide worried eyes, and for the briefest instant their expression reminded her of another expression and another time…

Ten years ago—or was it more? The firm sound of the front door closing with finality, and Keely's pale, solemn face watching Mandy with uncanny intensity. Her father wasn't coming back, and she knew it. Something about her eyes, so wide and blue, held knowledge her mother had never spoken to her, never uttered to another living being. Now those same big eyes, framed by a different face, held the same worry. _When did she learn how to worry?_ Mandy wondered. Had Keely always somehow had the knack? Or had she acquired it from watching her mother?

Mandy dropped her eyes, unable to keep looking at this person so like and yet so unlike the daughter she remembered. The big eyes that used to stare up at her from a tiny pixie face now belonged to someone else, someone she wasn't sure she knew anymore. "I…" Mandy said, groping for words—any words.

"We can go home," Keely said quickly, reaching out to take her mother's hand, but Mandy evaded the touch.

"No," she said quietly. "No. You can stay." What was the point in hauling her home now? What was the point in trying to restart the process of parenting, obviously somewhere gone awry?

"Mom." Mandy looked up, focused on Keely's cheekbones because she could not look into her eyes. "It's okay."

_No, it's not,_ Mandy wanted to say. _I'm not ready for you to grow up. And you're not ready either, no matter what you might think._ "Mrs. Diffy," Mandy said, "I'm sorry to have interrupted you."

"Nothing doing," the other mother said. "Why don't we all go inside and have some lemonade? We can talk." She saw Keely roll her eyes at the mention of yet another difficult discussion.

"I don't want to impose," Mandy said. "We hardly know each other."

"That's easily remedied," Barbara said. She cupped a hand around her mouth and called Phil. "Phil! Leave your sister alone—come here, please."

Pim stuck her tongue out at Phil, who made a face back but abandoned his pursuit and climbed the porch steps. His willing expression turned wary when he saw the group on the porch. Keely was clutching a green towel but dripping all over the porch, and she held her bag in her other hand. Before he had a chance to fear that she was leaving, she put it down. His mother ushered Mandy Teslow into the kitchen and beckoned to Phil. He grabbed a dry red towel from the pile and wrapped it around Keely's shoulders, rubbing her arms.

"Hey," he said.

"Hey." She smiled, but she wasn't looking at him and he wasn't convinced it was a real smile. "They want us inside."

"They can wait a nanosecond." He turned her head, trying to make her look at him, and heard a small, impatient breath escape her mouth. She pushed his hand away.

"Phil!" she said, "I'm not a baby. Don't treat me like one."

"Okay—okay!" He raised his hands in surrender. "What'd I do?"

She closed her eyes for a long moment, then opened them and adjusted her towel around her shoulders. "Nothing. I'm sorry."

"What's she doing here?"

"How should I know?"

"What did she say to make you so touchy?"

Keely dropped her head against his shoulder and Phil carefully brought his arms up to hold her. Even after nearly a month this still seemed so new to him, and he wasn't always sure what Keely expected him to do. Most of the time she was perfectly happy and content, moving close to the speed of light, throwing herself into everything that came her way (with the exception of algebra). It was only occasionally that these baffling moods came over her, when he had no idea what would make her smile or cry, make her laugh or try to sock him. He wished he knew a little better what he was supposed to do when she was determined to be unhappy, but he was grateful it didn't happen often and it was soon over. And when she apologized all she wanted was to be held and cuddled—something Phil didn't mind in the least.

He'd known from the beginning that Keely was a very tactile person, giving hugs with impunity to various members of the student body, but there had always been a sense of distraction about them—as if her strong, slim arms were locked around him for that half an instant, but her mind was already three or four steps ahead. All that had changed, though Phil couldn't say for sure whether it was the decision to become a couple or his disappearance and reappearance that was the cause. Keely still flew down the hallways of H.G. Wells planting hugs on Via and her other girlfriends—and even Owen and Seth, occasionally—but the way she touched Phil had changed drastically. Something inside her quieted and stilled when she touched him, slowed her down to match his speed, and she was present in her touch in a way she hadn't been before.

Phil moved his hands against the terrycloth, feeling Keely's cheek leaning on the shoulder of his rashguard. She was quiet now, her impatience spent, and she would be perfectly content to spend a couple of hours silently with him, being held. Unfortunately, that wasn't an option at the moment. Phil squeezed her gently, kissed her damp hair, and reluctantly moved away. "You smell like dish soap," he said pleasantly.

Keely laughed, which had been his intention. "I'd like a shower," she admitted, turning toward the doorway.

"I'd like to help," he said, catching her around the waist. He brought her close again, her back held tight against his front, and felt her laugh again. She pried his hands loose and slipped out of his grasp.

"My mother is inside," she reminded him, her voice low and musical, full of mirth.

"So is mine," he said, trying hard to bolster her good mood. Whatever had happened while he'd been chasing Pim, it had bothered her and she obviously wasn't ready to talk about it. If she didn't want to deal with it, what was the point in letting it drag them down?

"They're waiting for us," she said, and she leaned forward and pressed a small kiss against his mouth.

"And getting impatient," Phil's mother said, but her voice was amused rather than impatient. She poked her head out the doorway and beckoned again. "Come on, you two."

"Mrs. Diffy," Keely said, obeying the parental figure, "I don't want to get your furniture all wet…" She stepped into the kitchen, avoiding her own mother's eyes.

"Of course not," Barbara said, herding them before her. "You loaned Pim some of your clothes a while ago, didn't you? Maybe they're still here."

Keely was about to open her mouth to deny it, and explain that she and Pim couldn't possibly ever wear the same clothes, when she caught Mrs. Diffy's wink. She smiled. "Right," she said. "I loaned Pim some clothes. For strategic…color…purposes."

Phil wanted to roll his eyes. Keely was a worse liar than his father, which was saying a lot. He took her hand. "Come on," he said, "let's go change."

"And you come right back down after," his mother called after him.

"You did not loan Pim any clothes!" Phil hissed in her ear as he followed her up the stairs.

"Hush!" She pushed him against the wall, then stepped close and gave him a soft kiss.

"They can't hear us up here anyway," he said in a normal voice, and opened the door to his room. Keely followed him in, feeling the change to hardwood flooring under her bare feet. He pulled his Wizard out of his desk drawer and turned it on, then handed it to her. "Here. There's only a limited amount of clothing from this century that it can do, but you should be able to find something."

Keely dropped her towel to the floor and scrolled through the options. "How do I pick something?" she asked. "I'm dripping all over your floor."

"Don't worry about it." Phil stepped up behind her, covering her hand with his, and showed her how to select an item. He brushed his lips across the back of her bare neck, making her shiver. Keely leaned back into him, and the sudden contact of skin on skin made her start. He had removed his rashguard while she was scrolling through the Wizard's clothing options, and his bare chest against her back was a new experience. His hands slid around her waist, his palms open on her belly. She leaned further into the touch, rested her head back against his shoulder and let him trail slow kisses along her neck. One of his hands moved, his fingers tracing light circles around her belly button. She smiled, her body melting into his as his hands moved across her skin. Slowly they slid up her ribcage and Keely stopped breathing. For the first time, Phil's hands slid up to cover her small, perfectly-shaped breasts. She turned her head where it rested on his shoulder, pressed her cheek against his neck, her hands grasping the Wizard so tightly that her fingertips were white.

"Phil…" she whispered, her voice gone. Even through the wet material of her swimsuit top she could feel the heat of his skin, and the subtle friction of the material as he moved his hands made her knees quiver. A desire stronger than any she had ever felt before awoke deep inside her body, something foreign and frightening, but electrifying and welcome at the same time. It uncurled inside her, dripped into her bloodstream; something that wasn't about wanting to be held and kissed and cuddled. It was stronger, ran deeper, and through the haze it created in her mind, she knew, somehow, that it was utterly out of her conscious control. Oh, she could step away from him. She could tell him to let go, tell him to stop, but it wouldn't quiet the new, raw fire kindled by his touch.

He tightened his hands and Keely caught her breath in what was almost a gasp. Her nipples hardened, responding to his touch, and rubbed against the wet fabric of her swimsuit top. It was almost too much sensation at once and her knees faltered. Phil dropped one of his hands to her waist, circling her body and holding her steady against him. His head was bent forward, his tongue darting out to touch the hollow of her clavicle. His lower hand found the waistline of her shorts, folded down to reveal the curve of her hipbones. With smooth, insistent fingers he played with the zipper of her shorts, drawing it the rest of the way open. He drew a slow line from that point up to her belly button, then played one fingertip just underneath the waistline of her swimsuit bottom.

"Do you want me to stop?" he whispered back, his voice grating close to her ear.

"No…" She swallowed. "But…"

"Phil!" His mother's voice carried up the stairs. "We're waiting!"

They both jumped, and Phil's hands dropped so suddenly that Keely staggered. He caught her again, his hands steady on her hips, and she turned around in his arms. His eyes were dark and wide, a mix of surprise and amazement playing over his expressive face. The corner of his soft mouth curved up in a small, sheepish smile. "I…guess I got a little carried away," he said.

"Yeah." Keely stepped closer again and slid her arms around his bare shoulders. She could feel his eyes on her, feel how nervous they both were now that the moment had been broken. His skin was smooth under her fingers. She wanted to touch him like he had touched her, but found that she didn't have the nerve. Would she, she wondered, if they hadn't been reminded that their mothers were waiting downstairs? "Phil, I—"

"I'm sorry," he said quickly, as if he were afraid she was mad at him.

"Don't be," she said, her mouth hovering close to his. Her eyes flicked up to his, then down again to watch as he nervously licked his lips. For another breath they paused, neither able to say anything, listening for noises from downstairs. Outside, Owen howled. "Phil," Keely said finally, "I…want you. I don't know how to describe what it feels like when you—you do that." His warm brown eyes were so close that when she looked at them she could see the individual eyelashes, could actually see the blackness of his pupil against the lighter color of his iris. "I don't want you to be sorry."

Phil looked into Keely's big, earnest eyes and saw that something had changed, somehow, as he allowed himself to get carried away touching her. He didn't know how to name it, didn't know if it was something about her voice, her eyes, her body, but he knew it was there. Before, he hadn't been sure she felt the same raw, intense desire he felt when they were together. Now, though, he was sure. He had seen it, and he had no doubts about what they might have done without his mother's interruption and her mother's presence. "You're driving me crazy," he said, allowing a trace of humor to enter his voice. "You know that, right?"

The ghost of a smile entered her eyes and flickered for an instant over her mouth. She caught her lower lip in her teeth, hesitating before she spoke. "My mom's leaving for Nebraska tomorrow," she said.

"I remembered." They were so close they were breathing the same breath, and Keely's eyes were on his mouth. "I also remember that we said we were going to take things one day at a time."

"That's getting harder," she said as he closed the small distance between them and kissed her. He agreed wholeheartedly.

* * *

Mrs. Diffy poured them each lemonade in plastic glasses with blue bulls-eye patterns. She led Mrs. Teslow into the living room and they sat on the couch. "We've all become quite fond of Keely here," she said lightly.

"I noticed," Mrs. Teslow replied. "Especially your boy."

Barbara laughed, determined not to let the comment bother her. "Phil's a good boy," she said. "Pim's the wild one—I suppose every family has to have one. And though her father and I love her to pieces, I will admit I always did want a girl I could connect with better."

_Well, you can't have mine,_ Mrs. Teslow thought, and then immediately felt ashamed. It wasn't this other mother's fault that she and Keely had drifted apart. Not knowing what to say, she sipped her lemonade.

"Phil and I have always been close, though," Mrs. Diffy said, seemingly willing to do most of the talking. "Does that sound strange? I know, it's supposed to be the other way around. But Phil and I have always been the responsible ones. Pim and her father—well—"

A crash sounded from the backyard, followed by a drifting cloud of white smoke. "Everything's under control!" Pim hollered, and Mrs. Diffy shot an amused look at her guest. "You see my point."

"I just don't understand it," Mandy Teslow said finally, wrapping her hands around her glass and staring down into the cloudy yellow liquid. "I turned around, and suddenly the little girl I remember telling to stay out of my makeup isn't so little anymore." She swirled her lemonade, bits of pulp sticking to the edges of the glass. She looked up, and suddenly it all came tumbling out. "I don't know what your feelings are about them," she said, her eyes flicking toward the staircase where Phil and Keely had disappeared. "It's obvious you know more about it than I do. But I'm supposed to leave on a business trip tomorrow morning, and I just don't feel comfortable now leaving Keely unsupervised for a week."

"You were before, though?" Mrs. Diffy cocked her head to the side. "What changed?"

"She did!" Mrs. Teslow caught herself. "Or I did. I don't know. Maybe both of us."

"Personally, I think Phil and Keely are old enough to make responsible decisions," Mrs. Diffy said, "but if it will make you feel better, I'll tell Phil he's not to be at your house this week."

"I don't mind so much if there are other kids there," Mrs. Teslow said slowly. "I do know how much Keely loves to have friends over for parties. I just don't want them alone together right now." She had a sinking suspicion that she was being unreasonable, but she couldn't make herself stop. "I'm her mother, and I have to make these decisions."

"I know all about that," Mrs. Diffy said. "Don't worry. They'll understand."

* * *

Phil rolled his eyes as Keely picked up the clothes his Wizard had created, gathering them in one arm and her towel in the other. "You could have just zapped them on," he said.

"But I'm still soaking wet," she said, "thanks to your little sister."

"Where are you going?"

Keely paused in his doorway and turned her head. "Are you kidding? I'm not changing in here!"

"Why not?"

She flashed him a falsely-sweet smile. "Because if I did," she said in a low voice that was meant for his ears alone, "I have a sinking suspicion we'd never make it downstairs."

She was probably right, too, Phil thought.

Keely smiled at him again and disappeared into the hallway. She slipped into Pim's room to change, since her mother probably assumed she was there anyway. The room was alive with color—green, mostly, with bold accents. Against one wall was a large black desk with a computer monitor and many future gadgets. Above it hung a professional-looking plaque emblazoned with the letter P.

Keely changed quickly into the dry jeans and long-sleeved pink shirt she'd chosen, leaving a couple of buttons open at the throat. She was barefoot still, but the late afternoon was warm and she didn't care. She went over to Pim's desk to look at the gadgets. The black monitor blinked to life as she approached.

"All hail Pim," the monitor read in blinking Courier.

"Give me a break," Keely said.

The text disappeared, and was replaced by a dark window that popped up in the lower right-hand corner of the screen. "Message from the year 2121 incoming," it read, "Waiting for acceptance. Acceptance granted?"

"Granted," Keely said idly, and left the room to see if Phil was ready to go downstairs. Pim would be happy to have a message from one of her future friends waiting for her when she got back from the party.


	6. Chapter 6

**Author's Note:**Thank all of you for the lovely responses. I write mainly for myself, so I'll certainly never beg for reviews, but it is nice to hear something helpful every once in a while. ;-) I was going to break this chapter up into two sections because it's so long (15 solid pages in Word, baby!), but I felt it really all needed to go together. Consider it a belated Halloween present.

* * *

Phil was already downstairs when Keely poked her head around the doorway to the living room, took a deep breath, and entered. "Hi," she said, and settled on the far edge of the loveseat, at right angles with her mother. 

"Good, we're all here," Phil's mother said. She said, "Keely, Phil—Mandy Teslow and I decided that Keely's going to go home instead of spending the night tonight with the rest of the kids. It's Mandy's last night at home for a week, and she wants to spend a little time with Keely before she leaves."

Keely nodded willingly, wondering if this was as bad as it was going to get. She had no idea what her mother was going to do when they were alone, but she had been terrified that her mother was going to make a scene in front of Phil and his family. As long as that didn't happen, she didn't mind missing the rest of the party.

"We've also decided that it's best you don't spend time alone in the Teslow house this coming week," Mrs. Diffy continued, and Keely saw Phil raise his head and stare at his mother. He didn't say anything, which Keely thought was probably the smartest thing to do under the circumstances.

"Are you saying I can't have friends over?" Keely asked quickly. "Because I was planning on Via spending the night…"

"Via?" her mother said. "Who's Via?"

"Mom, you've met Via. We've gone to the movies together. She's slept over at our house a million times."

The tone of voice was one Mandy heard often from her daughter—one of resignation mixed with a kind of mild impatience at her forgetfulness. Normally she tolerated it, but today it irritated her. "I know Tia," she said.

"Tia moved away over a year ago," Keely said gently.

"She's right out in the back yard," Mandy protested.

"Yes—she's here visiting her aunt and uncle for a couple of weeks." Keely stood up and offered her mother her hand. "Do you want to go home now? Because we can." She waited anxiously for the answer, hoping her mother would wait to make a scene until they were out of earshot. She wasn't sure what her mother was so upset about, or when she had started caring about where Keely spent her time, but she wanted to get her out of the Diffy household before anything horribly embarrassing happened.

Mandy Teslow looked at the outstretched hand of her daughter, at the long fingers still a little wrinkled from playing in the water, at the shiny lacquered nails, but she didn't take it. "We probably should head home," she agreed, knowing there was so much she needed to say to Keely but at the same time not knowing how to say it.

"If there's anything you need, just call," Mrs. Diffy said, and Keely knew that she was talking to both of them even though the comment was directed at her mother. She glanced at Phil, who hadn't said a word the entire time. He was watching her carefully with an expression that was altogether too curious for her comfort. She didn't want Phil's curiosity. Even though they were on a hundred-percent honesty pact she didn't owe him the confusing details of her relationship with her mother. He had never seemed to care before—why should that change now?

Mandy Teslow followed the direction of her daughter's gaze and was unsurprised to see that she and Phil were looking at each other with the kind of speaking glances that came only with close familiarity. She tried to look at him objectively as she set her lemonade glass down on a coaster and gathered up her purse. He wasn't particularly tall or particularly muscular, wasn't strikingly beautiful or quietly intense. There was something…something comfortable about him that she wanted to like, and she wondered if that was what had drawn Keely so close to him. He was good-looking, she supposed, in an understated sort of way. It was difficult to assess his personality, as he hadn't said a word during their encounter.

But no matter how innocuous he seemed, she knew she had to be wary of him—wary because it was obvious Keely wasn't. It was equally obvious that Keely had no intention of being wary of him, no matter what her mother said to her, so Mandy Teslow knew she was going to have to watch them both carefully. She had no idea how to go about doing this, but she was determined to try.

The minute the door closed behind Keely and Mandy Teslow, Phil rounded on his mother. "How could you do this?" he demanded.

"Do what?" She picked up the lemonade glasses from the table and Phil followed her into the kitchen. Outside, Owen was showing Lloyd how to use the grill. The sharp, smoky smell of charcoal and lighter fluid wafted through the windows and into the kitchen.

"Say Keely and I couldn't hang out at her house this week." Phil ran his hand through his damp hair, making it stick out in all directions. "We never have any privacy as it is!"

"Nobody bothers you when you're upstairs," his mother said calmly. She reached out and smoothed his hair down.

"You don't, but everybody else does," Phil said. "Pim just waltzes in and out whenever she wants, and you know no lock in the world can keep her contained. Curtis is always watching us—do you know what he called Keely the other day?" Phil imitated Curtis' grunting voice. "Phil's _mate_."

His mother laughed.

"It's not funny! Do you have any idea how not funny it is?"

"Sweetie," Mrs. Diffy said, "I know you're frustrated. I know it's hard when you feel like everyone is watching you." She squeezed his shoulder. "The two of you are just too adorable _not_ to watch."

"Thanks." He sounded less than thrilled.

"But you have to try and look at things from Mandy Teslow's perspective. I don't know how much time Keely and her mother actually spend together, but I can guarantee that that woman had no idea you were dating until she saw you kiss her little girl in the back yard this afternoon."

Phil flushed. "It's not my fault if Keely doesn't talk to her mother," he said, and his voice sounded sulky even to his own ears.

"No. It's not your fault, but it is kind of your problem," Barbara said. She took a package of frozen pre-made hamburgers out of the freezer. "Run these out to your dad, will you?" she said.

Phil took the meat outside, where his father and Owen were both staring at the good-sized fire they had managed to coax out of the charcoal. "You know you're going for coals, not flames, right?" he asked.

"Sure, Cheese Steak," Owen said.

"Where's Keely?" Via asked, coming up behind them. "You do know I'm vegetarian, right?"

"So's Tia. We've got fake cow inside," Phil said. "Keely's mom came by and about had a heart attack when she saw her kiss me."

Via tried to hold back a laugh, but wasn't entirely successful. "Wow," she said. "Sounds bad."

"Yeah. They went home."

"Seriously?"

"Yup."

"Sucks to be her," Tia said, coming up on Phil's other side. "I wonder if she'll be grounded."

"No," Phil said, "but I am officially banned from her house while her mother is out of town."

Both girls burst out laughing at that, making Owen and Lloyd tear themselves away from the fire for a moment. "Poor Philly," Tia gasped through her laughter.

"Go ahead and laugh," Phil said, "I just hope she's not at home getting yelled at."

"Yell? Mrs. Teslow?" Tia snorted. "You have _got_ to be kidding me. That woman doesn't know how to yell. She barely knows how to say no to Keely, let alone get mad at her."

"That's not what it looked like from where I was sitting," Phil mumbled as he turned and went back inside.

* * *

Keely walked through the front door of her house, acutely aware of her mother behind her. Her palms were sweating, and she surreptitiously rubbed them against the thighs of her jeans. The house was dark, and smelled like the potpourri Mandy put in the vacuum cleaner. She went into the living room and turned on a lamp, then dropped into a chair and looked hesitantly up at her mother. 

The worry was back in Keely's eyes. Mandy paced slowly down the middle of the living room, lit only by the single lamp Keely had switched on. Long shadows climbed the walls and hid the corners of the room. Keely's eyes looked even bigger in the dim light.

How did you go about having an adult conversation, Mandy wondered, with someone you still thought of as a child? She didn't think it was possible.

"Keely," Mandy said, resting her chin on her clasped hands for an instant, "I have to say, I'm very disappointed with you."

"Why?" Keely demanded. "For going to a party? For not telling you? I _never_ tell you where I'm going. Why should today be any different?"

"You're right," Mandy said, though she didn't want to admit it. "I haven't been keeping track of you like I should. But that's not what I was talking about."

"What, then?"

Mandy didn't know. She didn't know how to answer the question, how to talk directly to this person who was somehow both her daughter and an unknown entity. "What time did you leave the house this morning?" she asked suddenly.

"I didn't come home last night."

Mandy's head jerked up, and Keely rolled her eyes. "I slept over at Via's house," she said.

"Via again. Why don't I remember anyone named Via?"

"I don't know!" Keely said, her voice rising. She had no idea where her mother was headed with this conversation, and she was starting to get frightened. This was nothing like talking with Phil's mother, who at least made sense when she asked difficult questions.

Her mother sank into a chair, her hands folded in front of her mouth, and looked directly into her eyes. "Keely," she said, her voice low, "why didn't you tell me?"

"Tell you what?" Keely heard her own voice rise again, becoming desperate. "What do you want from me?"

Mandy Teslow took a deep breath, wet her dry lips, closed her eyes, and forced herself to ask the question she had been dancing around all evening. "Are you having sex with that boy?"

"No!" Keely said quickly.

"Is that the truth?"

"Yes," she said, hugging her elbows. She was grateful that, for the moment, she was able to both tell the truth and tell her mother what she wanted to hear.

"I want you to promise me you won't."

Mandy blanched when she saw the flicker of surprise that crossed Keely's face, followed by an expression she couldn't place. It looked very similar to defiance. "What if we get married someday?" she asked.

"Keely, this isn't some sort of game!" her mother said, her voice tight. "You didn't even ask if you were allowed to date, and—"

"You've got to be kidding me," Keely said. "Allowed to date? I'm sixteen—almost seventeen. Since when do I have to ask permission to be around people?"

"Well, what did you expect?" Mandy shot back. "You might think you know everything because you're so _old_, but you're not old enough to be letting boys touch you like that, and—"

"Like what, exactly?" Keely demanded. "I don't know what you think you saw, but it was just a kiss!"

"A kiss is more than that when you're hardly wearing anything," her mother snapped back.

"It was a pool party!" Keely protested. "Minus the pool. _Everyone_ was in swimsuits; that's what swimsuits are for."

"Everyone wasn't acting the way you were!"

"How was I acting, exactly?" Keely swallowed. "How were we acting? Phil's a good guy, Mom, and I really like him. I don't see what's so wrong with an innocent kiss."

"That's just it!" Mandy said. "You're too young to see what the problem is, which means you're too young to make these decisions for yourself. That's why I have to make them for you."

Keely looked suspiciously at her mother. "You're kidding, right?"

"No." Mrs. Teslow took a deep breath. "I'm not going to tell you that you can't see him. I don't like the idea of you having a boyfriend, but I'm not an idiot. You won't listen to me if I go that far."

"Mom, you're being ridiculous."

"Ridiculous or not, I'm still the mom." Mrs. Teslow stood up again. "These are the rules until I say otherwise—Phil isn't allowed in the house if no one else is here, and he's not allowed in your room _period_. No driving with him without an adult in the car."

"He doesn't drive anyway," Keely said, "and you won't let me have a car."

"That solves that problem then, doesn't it? No going on dates unless they're in public places, and you're to call or write a note telling me where you're going and when you'll be home." She grabbed a pen and a notepad from the coffee table. "Give me your cell number again, just to make sure I have it right," she said, feeling a small burst of pride that she was able to get that number without having to admit that she didn't have it in the first place.

"What exactly do you have against Phil?" Keely asked suspiciously, writing the number down for her mother.

"Oh, Keely, I don't have anything against him," she said, taking the paper back. "His father's a little strange, but—"

"At least he _has_ one," Keely muttered. She hadn't meant for her mother to hear her, but she did.

"Let's not go there tonight," Mandy said. "I'm not in any sort of mood to argue with you about something that can't be changed. As I said, I have nothing against Phil Diffy. He's pulled your math grades out of the basement, so he can't be all bad. But I don't know him, Keely."

"You could get to."

"I could," Mandy said, "and I'll think about it. But for now, those are your rules." She reached out as if to touch Keely's shoulder, but at the last minute she pulled her hand back and put it in her pocket instead. "I'm leaving early in the morning. You won't be awake." She cleared her throat and stared at the dark window behind her daughter's head. Keely was watching her, and she didn't want to look into those big eyes. She was afraid of what she might see there. "Don't forget the recycling while I'm gone. Or the trash. There's grocery money in an envelope in the kitchen if you need it."

Keely stared at her mother's retreating back as the older woman left the room. She heard the creak of the staircase and sighed heavily. "Sure. Sure, Mom," she whispered.

* * *

"Why is everything always about Phil?" Pim demanded, charging down the staircase and into the kitchen. "Why don't you ask about me once in a while?" 

"We ask about you all the time," her mother said calmly. "Not two hours ago I asked if you and the rest of the girls had enough blankets and pillows, and if there had been enough hot water for everyone to shower. Now, where's Phil?"

"Last I saw he was out back with Seth and Owen," Pim said. "Mom, some idiot went into my room and accepted a transmission from the future while we were all outside."

"Well, nobody went upstairs at all today except me and your dad—oh, and Phil and Keely, for a minute." It was dark outside now, and there was a mountain of dishes in the sink that Debbie Berwick had had to be forcibly restrained from washing. All the kids were outside folding away the tarp and cleaning up the towels and cups that littered the backyard. Mrs. Diffy opened a bag of marshmallows and poured them into a serving bowl, then put the bowl on a platter. She pulled out a stack of chocolate bars and began unwrapping them.

"Great. I bet it was one of them," Pim said. She grabbed several squares of chocolate and ate them.

"What's so wrong with that, sweetie?" her mother asked, breaking the chocolate bars into smaller pieces. "Whoever it was, they were probably just trying to be nice."

"Well, it was junk mail! What's so nice about that?"

"Junk mail?" Mrs. Diffy dusted off her hands. "Hand me that box of graham crackers, will you, Pim?"

"There wasn't any message, just an annoying little bug I've been trying to locate for the past half-hour. I can't find it to delete it." Pim pulled a box out of the cupboard and stole a cookie before giving the box to her mother. "I hope Blondie's mom grounds her good."

Mrs. Diffy rolled her eyes. "Nobody's getting grounded, Pim. She was just concerned about how much time Phil and Keely have been spending together lately. I'm sure they're discussing it calmly and rationally as we speak."

"Time. Right." Pim shot her mother a look. "Why does everyone assume I'm an idiot because I'm younger than Phil?"

Mrs. Diffy put a hand on her daughter's head. "Nobody thinks you're an idiot. Believe me. Now come make s'mores. Even little geniuses like s'mores, don't they?"

"I suppose," Pim said, and followed her mother out into the back yard.

Seth had brought his parents' portable firepit, and between them all the boys—including Mr. Diffy—had somehow managed to spend forty-five minutes lighting crumpled pieces of newspaper on fire and sticking them into the firewood without getting it to light. Finally Via had rolled her eyes, taken one piece of newspaper, a small handful of twiggy kindling, and one match, and lit the fire.

"My dad's in the Royal Navy," she said, "and he's allergic to femininity. Trust me, I know how to light a fire."

"You can sit by me," Owen offered generously, but Tia had pulled Via firmly back into the safety of the girls' section.

"I wish Keely were here," Tia said vaguely, stealing Phil's perfectly-roasted marshmallow and squeezing it between two graham cracker squares.

"Oh, did she go home?" Debbie Berwick asked. She sidestepped the burning marshmallow that fell off of Seth's stick, nibbling at her s'more with perfect little bites. "Moose knuckles! I was hoping she would curl my hair tonight."

Tia and Via looked at each other for a long moment, then squealed. "Girl," Tia said, "tonight, you are getting the makeover of your _life_."

"Hoo-boy," Pim said, "hold on there, sister. If you want to stay up late and do all that girly-girl stuff tonight, we're gonna have to change sleeping arrangements." She glanced around at the circle of teenagers. "Berwick, you're now staying with these two fashion-cases in the guest room."

"Don't you want to join us, Pim?" Debbie asked. "Oh! We could cut your hair!"

Pim started at her. "_Nobody_ touches these locks, Berwick, got that? Nobody. Especially not you, or these two-thirds of the Three Musketeers here. No way, no how. The boys can fight over the couches downstairs, and I'm sleeping alone in my room."

"Party-pooper," Debbie said.

"Got that right."

* * *

The house was different. Keely couldn't put her finger directly on the change, but she felt it. Perhaps the ruin was getting older—she couldn't tell. How did you measure the age of things long since turned to ashes? 

Certainly the baby's crying had changed. She didn't want to go back into that room littered with bones, but something was pulling her forward. She closed her eyes, hoping she would wake up somewhere else.

No such luck.

The wind was cold, and it whistled in the bare arms of the bony trees. Dry leaves skittered across the piles of rubble, catching on bits of smashed pottery and porcelain. "No," Keely tried to say, but her mouth wouldn't work. She shivered, dressed only in a thin shirt, and crossed her arms over her chest. Her bare feet were numb, and she couldn't tell from one moment to the next what she was stepping on. She stumbled and felt a sharp, tearing pain just below her ankle. She had re-opened the cut from before, which had stubbornly refused to heal.

The child was crying fitfully, as if tired. For long moments the cries ceased altogether, and Keely paused, holding her breath until they began again. She would prefer to have paused indefinitely, but this was not an option. The invisible force pulled her toward the room of bones with an insistence she had no power to fight. She limped a little on her hurt foot, feeling the warm drip of blood on her skin.

Vaguely in the back of her mind she wondered why the dreams hadn't stopped with Phil's return. She supposed that meant that her recurring nightmares had nothing to do with him, though this was not a welcome conclusion. If her dreams weren't about Phil, likely he could not help her. And help was what she needed, more than anything, at this point.

Jagged rags of moonlight filtered through the torn clouds, and Keely knelt by a bookcase, the contents of which had not been fully incinerated. With trembling hands she reached out and pulled a book with cracked leather binding off the shelf. A fat black spider dropped from the shelf onto her lap and she jumped, but her voice would not work to scream. In the fitful light she let the book fall open where it would, revealing black scrapbook pages covered in photographs. It was too dark to tell whether they were colored or black and white, but she saw the laughing face of a baby, one finger in its mouth, posed in a bassinet. For a horrible instant she thought of the tiny jawbone in the nearby room, with its pearly little teeth still rooted deep in the bone. The child wailed again, but weakly.

Keely felt the fine hair on the back of her neck rise. For the first time in these terrifying dreams, she felt that she was not alone. There was someone in the house with her. She could feel eyes watching her. Shaking with cold and fear, she stood up. The scrapbook tumbled from her lap, landing in a pile of rubble with an echoing thud, and she ran. She hadn't taken more than a dozen steps before her foot caught on something hidden in her path, and she plummeted headlong toward the floor…

…and jerked upright in her own bed, a scream she could not voice caught in her throat.

Keely shivered, her body wracked with a bitter cold that belied the balmy night. It was still dark outside. She pushed herself out of bed, not wanting to stay in her sweaty sheets when there was no comfort to be found there. She paced the length of her room twice, starting at even the familiar shadows in her closet. The glowing green numbers on her clock steadied and held when she focused on them. It was almost three in the morning. As if from a great distance, she heard the sound of the garage door opening, and then the reverberations of her mother's car as it drove away down the street. She was gone without a word, and suddenly Keely couldn't stand the thought of being alone in her mother's dark house with just the memories of her dreams to keep her company.

She grabbed a pair of yoga pants out of her closet and pulled them on, not bothering to change the camisole she had been sleeping in, and slid her feet into a pair of flip-flops. "She said Phil wasn't allowed here," she muttered, wrapping her arms around herself and cupping her sharp elbows in her hands. "She didn't say anything about me going over there." The sound of her own voice dropping words into the silence of the shadowed house was creepy, and she couldn't stop shivering. She took a deep breath, wrenched her door open, and ran down the stairs, out of the house, and into the street.

The slap of her sandals against the pavement echoed up and down the empty street, and Keely tried to jog as quietly as possible. The little, rustling night shadows made her jump. Her hands and feet were numb, and she didn't know if she would ever be warm again—though she could still feel the burning line just below her ankle where she had ripped that cut open again.

How had it happened? The adrenaline was still pounding in her veins, making her feel dizzy and lightheaded. She was cold—so cold—and afraid. She had been willing to dismiss the cut below her ankle when it had appeared, willing to pretend there was some obvious explanation for it that she wasn't, somehow, grasping. But it hadn't healed, and without looking she knew it was torn open again. It had happened in her dream, but somehow it had happened in real life, too. She stumbled over an uneven crack in the sidewalk, almost walking out of her flip-flops. The feeling of being watched was there again, even though she was awake. _It's not real,_ she told herself furiously. _Stop freaking yourself out over nothing!_ She couldn't quite make herself believe it.

Keely slowed as she approached the Diffy house. There was a light shining in Pim's room, which surprised her until she remembered the party. Were Pim and her friends still awake? She paused in the street just before the house, considering her next move. She hadn't been thinking rationally before—all she had wanted was to find Phil. Now, though, she had no idea how she was going to accomplish that. For a moment she wondered whether she should just turn around and go back to her own house. But, no. She shivered, hugging herself tightly. She couldn't go back to that silent, empty house, not even if she were to turn on every light in the entire place.

Suddenly the front door of the Diffy house opened, and two dark figures stepped out onto the porch. "Shh!" Keely heard one of them hiss. She stole closer, hiding behind one of Mrs. Diffy's topiaries, and the shadows materialized into Little Danny and Pim. They were lugging something big down the porch steps, and Keely didn't wait to see what it was. She slid along the line of hedges, blending with the shadows, and slipped into the house without a backward glance for Pim's newest scheme.

The house was nearly silent, though it smelled a thousand times more comforting than her own house. She could smell the lingering smoky traces of grilled hamburgers, and the sweet smell of baked goods. Debbie had probably made cupcakes. Keely heard someone snoring in the living room—probably Owen, she thought—and the whispered hisses of Pim and Little Danny from the front yard. She stole quietly up the stairs, finding Phil's door by feel. Relief flooded through her like sunlight, or oxygen, as she stepped inside and closed the door behind her. His room was dark, but it smelled like soothing sleep and clean linen, like floor wax and Phil's skin. She stood just inside the closed door for a long moment, breathing deeply.

"Pim," came Phil's sleepy voice from out of the darkness, "go away." She heard the rustle of sheets and saw Phil raise his head, a darker circle against the blackness. "Whatever you're plotting, do it to someone else."

Keely took a deep breath and stepped away from the door. "It's not Pim," she said.

She heard the quick snap of blankets being thrown back and saw the shadow of Phil jump upright. "Keely?" he asked cautiously, and she felt his hand on hers. "You're freezing!"

He pulled her toward him in the darkness and Keely moved readily into his arms, hugging the firmness of his waist. He was wearing a thin shirt, and she could feel the warmth of his skin beneath it. She breathed in the smell of him, of sleep unplagued by terrifying dreams, and closed her eyes. Slowly she felt her heart rate begin to slow back down to something resembling a normal rhythm.

"I had a dream," she said, searching for the words to explain to him just how it had made her feel. "I was lost," she said finally. That wasn't quite correct, but she didn't know how else to explain the confusion of the dream.

"You're not lost, Keel," he said, his voice vibrating against her cheek. "You're right here. How did you get so cold?"

She let him draw her down to sit on his bed, let him wrap the blankets, still warm from his body, around her shoulders. "I was cold in my dream," she said. "It's not the first time, Phil. They keep coming—they won't go away!"

"Shh." His voice was low and gentle, and she felt his hand in her hair for a moment before he leaned over and turned on his desk lamp. The low light illuminated the room well enough for Keely to see his sleep-tousled hair and the concern in his dark eyes. "Everyone else is asleep," he said.

"Pim isn't. She and Little Danny were dragging something out into the yard. That's how I got in." Keely took another deep breath. She was starting to feel normal again, inside at least. Outside, she was still cold.

Phil snorted. "I should have guessed." He took her hands and rubbed them vigorously. "How in the world did you get so cold?" He kissed them, breathed warm air against her skin.

"I told you—it happened in my dream," she said stubbornly.

"Yes, you said that," Phil said gently, "but, Keel, dreams aren't real."

"Explain this, then," Keely said, and she slid her foot out of her sandal and showed him the wet red line just below her anklebone. Phil grabbed a tissue out of the box by the bed and pressed it against the cut. "It happened _weeks_ ago, Phil—the dreams, I mean. They won't go away. And I cut myself in a dream weeks ago, too. It won't heal, and tonight it happened again."

Phil blotted the cut gently, and Keely saw when he pulled the stained tissue away that the thin, clean line she remembered was now jagged and torn from being ripped open again. "That's really weird," Phil said.

"You're telling me?" Keely felt tears rising in her throat and tried to swallow them. What was the point in crying now? She was awake, and had made it to the one place she knew she was always safe—with Phil.

It didn't work. Keely felt the hot line of a tear tracing its way down her cheek, and she heard Phil sigh. "Don't, Keel," he said. "We're going to find out what's going on." He grabbed more tissues out of the box and placed firm pressure against the cut. "Let's stop the bleeding first, though. Okay?"

"Yeah." Keely took a tissue he offered her and pressed it to the inside corners of her eyes. "Do you want to hear what happens in the dreams?" She took a breath, and found that she was no longer on the verge of crying. She couldn't help but believe Phil when he said that everything would be all right. She looked around his room, nearly as familiar as her own, and dearer still because it was Phil's own corner of the Diffy house—a house as full of warmth and life as her house was currently devoid of it.

"Not just yet," he said, tracing the delicate curve of her anklebone with his fingers as he applied pressure to the bleeding cut. A shiver ran up Keely's spine. "Keel, I really think we should go wake my parents up. You can tell all of us at once."

Keely swallowed nervously. "I don't know, Phil…" she said, beginning to curl in on herself as she so often did when she was afraid of something.

Phil saw this and gently but firmly took her hands in his, not letting her wrap her arms around herself. "It'll be okay," he said. Her eyes were dark in the dim light from his small desk lamp, but he could still see the mask of skepticism playing over her expressive features. "Look," he said, "I don't know what else to do! I mean, I can access the Dr. Dream Decoding Database and we can see what the elements of your dream mean. But I don't know anything about the physical manifestation of cerebral illusions."

"Say what now?"

He smiled. "I don't know how it's possible—_if_ it's possible—for dreams to affect people like this."

"Phil, I'm telling you it happened!"

"I know." He squeezed her hands. "I believe you. I just don't have any answers for you. Maybe my parents will."

Keely still hesitated. "What if we get in trouble?" she asked finally.

"For what?"

"Don't you remember? We're not supposed to be spending time alone, and I was supposed to spend the night at home."

"You did. It's morning."

"_Phil_."

He dropped one of her hands and removed the tissues from her ankle. It looked like it had stopped bleeding and was starting to close over. "She was just saying those things to make your mom stop worrying," he said. "Honestly, my mother adores you. She doesn't care what we do—she trusts us."

Keely sighed. "I wish my mom did."

Phil kissed her fingers. "Let's take this one set of parents at a time. What do you say we go talk to mine?"

Keely shivered. "I'm still cold."

"All the more reason to go now," he said. "You'll be more convincing."

"All right. If you promise they won't yell."

"Promise."

* * *

When Phil left to get his parents Keely slid her other sandal off her foot and pulled his blankets more firmly around herself. She didn't know exactly what she had expected from Phil, but somehow this wasn't quite it. She gazed around his room again, and without him the shadows started to seem less familiar and more threatening. She stared at the suit of armor in the corner for a long moment, but it didn't move. She was still so cold that she couldn't stop shivering. What she wanted more than anything was to do something she had never done before—to curl up in Phil's bed and sleep, his arms around her and his body stretched out by her side. She wondered if he snored. 

Her thoughts were cut short by the door opening, and three figures stepped into the room. The last, tallest one closed the door behind himself, and the shortest one snapped on the overhead light. They materialized into Phil and his parents.

"Keely, honey," Mrs. Diffy said, and she sat down on Phil's bed next to Keely. Without asking and without warning, she swept her into a hug. Keely smiled and squeezed her back. This, she thought, _this_ surely was what family was supposed to feel like! You did something you thought you might get in trouble for, but there they were, glad to see you just the same. _Worried_ about you.

Phil stood nervously next to his father, watching his mother put her robed arms around Keely. He didn't altogether know how Keely felt about his over-expressive family, but they hadn't managed to scare her off yet. He saw Keely hug his mother back, and wondered when she had last hugged her own mother with that same kind of strength.

Barbara released Keely from the hug, but gripped her shoulders and held her at arms' length. "You're freezing!" she said. "How on earth did you get so cold in the middle of summer?" She grabbed Phil's blankets, which had slipped during the hug, and wrapped them around Keely again. "It's three in the morning and it's got to be seventy degrees outside still."

"I…" Keely started. For a moment her voice froze in her throat, and she was acutely aware of three pairs of eyes watching her, waiting for her to say something. She didn't know how they were going to take her explanations, or whether they were even going to believe her. What if she made a fool out of herself in front of Phil's parents? Would the warm, welcoming feeling of this household be forever ruined for her? Would they encourage Phil to spend time with other kids? Would they think she was crazy?

No. Keely looked at Phil's mother, her hair in disarray, her face free of makeup, and knew that she had nothing to fear from the older woman. "I keep having dreams," she said quickly, before her nerves could return. "It's the same, but different, every time. There's a house—a ruin. It's night, and so cold." She shivered. "I'm alone, and I don't know where I am."

"Sounds scary," Barbara said encouragingly. "What else?"

"It's hard to explain," Keely said. "I just thought they were dreams. But things keep happening."

"What kind of things?"

"Like being cold," Keely said, rubbing her arms under the blankets. She saw Phil take a half-step toward her, as if wanting to help her somehow, but he stopped. She was thankful—showing affection around his parents was still supremely awkward, and there was nothing he could do, at the moment, anyway. "I'm cold in my dreams, and I wake up cold." She moved her legs, untucking her ankle from under her opposite knee, and showed them the long, jagged cut. In the full light she could see the blood staining her foot, where it had dripped while she walked. "And this. I didn't get hurt when I was awake, Mrs. Diffy. I got hurt in my dream."

"Strange…" Lloyd said, coming closer to examine the gash. "Barb here can patch you up quick as anything, though."

"What on earth could have hurt you in bed?" Mrs. Diffy said, shaking her head.

"That's what I'm saying!" Keely said, uncomfortable with the intense scrutiny of Phil's parents. "I don't know how it happened here, but I can tell you how it happened in my dream."

For a long moment nobody said anything. The seconds ticked audibly by in the nearly-silent house. Keely looked up at Phil, who shrugged. Finally, Mrs. Diffy spoke. "Well," she said, squeezing Keely's shoulder, "there's not much we can do about it tonight, at any rate."

"How'd you get in, anyway?" Lloyd asked, glancing out Phil's window as if he expected to find a ladder or rope leading to the ground.

"Pim," Keely said.

"Pim?"

"She and Little Danny were lugging something outside when I walked by."

"Great." Lloyd tightened the sash on his red- and black-striped robe and headed out of the room. "That wasn't some_thing_. I bet you anything it was some_one_."

Mrs. Diffy just shook her head. She gave Keely another quick, hard hug. "It looks like you're not bleeding anymore, but we can wrap your foot up the old-fashioned way if it'll make you feel better. I'm more worried about this cold." She took Keely's hands and held them out. "Your fingers are almost blue. Can't you warm up?"

"I don't know," Keely said.

"Mm."

"What about the Medic?" Phil asked.

"Medic?" Keely looked at Phil.

"Future gadget," his mother explained. "Instantaneous first-aid. Quite helpful, usually, but risky in this case."

"Risky how?"

"Using future technology on present-day people like you, Keely, is not without risks. There's no telling how your unadapted systems will react to being manipulated on the cellular level. Even in the future there are some people who can't tolerate it."

Keely sat up, looking alarmed. "Nobody ever told me that playing with future gadgets was dangerous!"

"Oh, most of the ones you'll have played with aren't terribly dangerous," Mrs. Diffy said calmly. "The Insta-morph, for example, doesn't actually alter your cellular makekup at all. It's mostly smoke and mirrors."

"And the New-Ager?"

"That's a little more complex," Mrs. Diffy admitted. "I'd prefer if you didn't use that one on yourself. Or the Medic, either. We'll use it if we have to, but I'd like to try some more traditional remedies first."

"Like what?" Phil asked.

"For starters," his mother said, "a good old-fashioned shower." She stood, still holding Keely's hands. "Not to worry, sweetie. We'll take care of you."

"Thanks," Keely said, allowing herself to be drawn to her feet. "My mother left for the airport a little while ago. I'm sorry for bothering you—I just really didn't want to be left alone."

"Never worry about bothering the Diffys," Barbara said. "The loyalty you've shown us by keeping our secret, and the friendship you've shown Phil—even Pim—is more than our family could ever repay." She smiled at her son, who was standing back and trying not to intrude. He looked anxious, and she didn't blame him. This new development was strange and unnerving, and while she had a few ideas about how to try to figure out what was going on in Keely's head, she was at a loss as to why it was happening. She could feel her shivering, even through the small contact of their clasped hands, and she could see her thin body trembling with a chill nobody else could feel. It wasn't safe for her to stay so cold, regardless of the cause.

Phil glanced up at his mother with anxious eyes, but he seemed perfectly willing to let her take charge. She led Keely out into the hall and gave her a gentle push toward the bathroom. "Phil will get you some clean towels," she said, stifling a yawn, "and then he's going back in his room." She gave her son a significant look, which he returned with the big, innocent, fawn-line eyes of pretended-innocence. "You stay in that shower until you're warm again. I'm going to check on Pim and her friends, and then I'm going back to bed. We'll talk about this more in the morning."

Keely smiled gratefully and slipped into the bathroom, shutting the door behind her. Phil opened the door to the linen closet, bringing out several of his mother's purple towels. "Was that really necessary?" he asked.

"Was what necessary?"

"Ordering me back into my room."

His mother chuckled and tousled the already-tangled hair on his head. "Phil, don't push it."

Phil knocked on the bathroom door, which opened immediately. He handed Keely the towels. A moment later they heard the shower start.

"Her mother was very clear today about what she was and was not comfortable with," Barbara said. "I really don't want to be caught in the middle of it."

"But—"

"Phil," she said, putting her hands on his shoulders, "I know you're frustrated because Mrs. Teslow wants to treat you and Keely like you're still children. But you've got to look at things from her perspective."

"How's that?"

"That woman loves her little girl so much," Barbara said. She put her arm around her eldest child and together they walked back into his room. "It's difficult for mothers to admit that their children are growing up."

"You don't seem to be having a problem with it."

"Mrs. Teslow and I are very different people." Barbara sat in Phil's desk chair as he climbed back into his bed. "And we're coming from very different situations. I have so many things in my life, Phil—you, yes, but also Pim and your father. Back in 2121 I have my job, too, you know. There's Curtis. I don't know where Keely's father is, or what happened to him, but Keely is really all Mrs. Teslow has. That and her job. I know she loves her work, but it's not the same kind of love."

Phil looked as if he were really trying to understand. That was one of the things she loved about her son, one of the ways in which he differed so much from his father. "You're saying that you love us differently than Mrs. Teslow loves Keely," he said slowly.

"Yes! In a way, Mandy Teslow's love is a very selfish one. It's not a kind word, I know, but it's the truth. She's suddenly realized that her little girl isn't so little anymore, and she's terrified of the changes that are going to take place in the near future. Keely's going to grow up. She'll probably go to college. Eventually she'll move out of her mother's house and live her own life, and then what will Mandy have?"

"I never really thought about it that way before."

"I know, which is why I'm telling you to start." Barbara smiled. "You may think that she doesn't like you, Phil, but it isn't really about you at all. You're just a very visible symbol of Keely's impending adulthood, and it's hard for her to accept that. It's important for all of us, however, that you and Keely act responsibly right now."

Phil looked at her suspiciously. "Has your definition of responsible changed from the last time we talked about this?"

"No." Barbara looked at her son, wondering—not for the first time—how this boy-child had managed to become so much like herself, so little like his father, and so adult so young. Maybe, she thought, all the teenagers in the future were like Phil and it was only in comparison with present-day young people that he seemed so mature. Somehow she couldn't bring herself to believe it. The tenderness he showed toward Keely was something innate, something that couldn't be separated from his character. Certainly outwardly he was much like his male peers—laughing at crude jokes, playing the occasional prank, doing stupid things and having to think fast to get out of trouble. But he had a gentler, deeper core to him that the other boys lacked. How had that happened?

"Then what's this about?" he asked, and she saw that his suspicion was tinged with hurt. "I thought you said you trusted us."

"I do," she said truthfully, "and if it were completely up to your father and I, we wouldn't be having this conversation. Unfortunately, Mrs. Teslow also has a say. I don't want to know what you and Keely are—or might be—doing physically. That's not my job, and frankly, it's information I'm not comfortable hearing. I might be handling this better than Keely's mom, but I have my limits."

Phil's cheeks reddened, and a flicker of an embarrassed smile played over his face.

"I also don't want to know," she continued, "because, Phil, I need to be able to tell Mandy Teslow that, as far as I know, you are not having sex with her daughter. Because she's going to ask. Maybe not today, and maybe not tomorrow, but eventually she's going to ask. I need to be able to tell her the truth _and_ tell her what she wants to hear."

"I get it," Phil said. "See no evil, hear no evil."

"Exactly." She stood up, just as they heard the front door close and the sound of Pim's rapid voice drifted up the staircase. "I knew you were smart enough to get it."

"So, do you want me to throw a sleeping bag on the floor of the guest room, where Tia and Via and Debbie Berwick are sleeping?"

Mrs. Diffy had stepped out into the hallway, but she poked her head back in. "Absolutely not! Have you gone insane?"

"Just trying not to put you in the middle of things," he said with a playful laugh.

"Smarty. No. As far as everyone else is concerned, Keely is sleeping peacefully in her own house tonight. Normally I don't condone lying, but Mrs. Teslow _did_ ask that Keely spend the night at home."

"So what do you want us to do?" he asked. They heard Lloyd trying to whisper downstairs, but he wasn't doing a very good job.

"Keep her in here until all the kids have gone home tomorrow morning," she said. "I'll zap us a replicant so they don't wonder where you are. Then, when it's just us, we'll see what's to do about this dream thing."

"Do you really think her dreams could be hurting her?" Phil asked, and his voice was laced with worry.

"The mind is a very powerful thing, Phil," his mother said. "Even with the best future technology we're not always entirely sure how or why it does the things it does. I don't know what's going on, but we'll do our best to figure it out."

* * *

Keely made sure the door was locked, then turned on the water in the shower, letting it get warm. She stepped out of her soft pink yoga pants, folding them carefully and putting them on the counter. In the bright light she could see the blue tinge to her skin that Phil's mother had mentioned. She shivered. She had never tanned well, going from cream to lobster in less time than it took Mrs. Diffy to botch dinner, but as far as she knew her skin had never been blue before. 

It was strange, she thought, showering in Phil's bathroom. Her hands were shaking so much that it was difficult to draw her pink-striped camisole over her head, but she was eager to step into the water. A hot shower sounded like the best idea she'd ever heard.

The faucet and fixtures were different than her own, but she quickly figured out how to activate the shower and stepped under the hot stream. She hadn't bothered to turn on the bathroom fan, and the air was beginning to get thick with steam. She stood, shivering, under water as hot as she dared make it, until finally she felt she was beginning to thaw. Feeling returned to her body slowly, tingling painfully along her arms and legs. The angry red cut stung. Keely felt almost as if she were rising from deep water, coming closer and closer to the surface, to the world of sound and light and feeling. She was profoundly grateful to Phil's mother, but also to Phil himself. At first she had wanted him to take care of her himself, but now she realized that this was a silly and unrealistic wish. It was better, by far, to have everything out in the open. Now she had the combined efforts of the entire Diffy family—minus Pim—pledged to help her. Phil alone would, she had to admit, probably not have been enough.

Keely knew that technically she was only supposed to be using the shower to get warm. Still, as feeling and dexterity returned to her fingers, she couldn't help herself. She picked up a bar of soap sitting in its dish and brought it to her nose. This was what Phil washed with—his parents had their own bathroom and she could clearly see pink body wash that had to be Pim's. She ran the soap between her wet hands, building lather, and smoothed it across the shining line of her shoulders. She washed her bloody foot, careful of the jagged gash, and drew lathery lines across her stomach. She smiled as the clean, soapy smell filled the bathroom. This was what Phil saw and smelled every day when he showered, she thought. This was what it was like to live in his house. She rinsed quickly and turned off the shower, hoping the sound of the water rushing in the pipes had not roused anyone who wasn't already awake.

She stepped out of the tub and drew one of the purple towels around herself. Her hair dripped down her back and she shivered. Though the steamy air in the bathroom was warm, goosebumps broke out down her arms. She wrapped another towel around her hair, dried off quickly, and dressed again. With idle curiosity she rifled through the drawers and cabinets as she towel-dried her hair. She found Phil's hair gel, Pim's makeup and lotions, and a nearly-untouched tube of toothpaste. There weren't any medications lurking anywhere, not even cough syrup. There was a ragged black plastic comb that was probably Phil's, and a plastic container full of Pim's hair accessories, but no brush. Where did Pim keep her brush? Keely frowned, checking all the drawers again. She had been hoping to use it.

Not finding it, Keely stepped out of the bathroom. The cooler air in the dark hallway made her shiver, and she darted for the closed door of Phil's room. The lights were on, and he was at his desk reading. He looked up, and smiled when he saw her.

"Feeling better?" he asked, standing up and coming quickly to her side.

"Much," she said, and shivered as a fat drop of water fell between her shoulder blades from her still-damp hair. "Don't let the shivering fool you."

"Let's dry your hair," he said. "You'll feel warmer—most of your body heat escapes through your head. Did you know that?"

"I don't want to turn on a hairdryer in the middle of the night," Keely said, not mentioning that she hadn't seen one in the bathroom anyway.

"Who said anything about a hairdryer?" He was out and back again, holding a little metal stick with a red glowing tip. "This is Pim's I-Wand."

"I-Wand?" Keely looked at it suspiciously. "I thought your mother said not to play with future gadgets…"

"This isn't dangerous," Phil said. "Watch."

He ran it slowly over her hair, and Keely put a hand up. Her hair, previously wet and tangled, was now dry and smooth. She ran a hand through it and smiled. "Thanks," she said. "I almost feel bad for getting Pim in trouble now."

"Don't be. You know what she did? She and Little Danny used her Wizard to knock Bradley unconscious and hauled him into Hackett's yard. They were planning to dress him up like an alien and leave him for Hackett to find in the morning."

Keely choked back a laugh. Phil put the I-Wand on his desk and snapped off the overhead light. In the dim glow of his desk lamp, Keely suddenly felt a spark of awkwardness. "I'm sorry for disturbing you all," she said quietly. "I was so scared, but I feel kind of stupid now."

"Come here." Phil took her hand and pulled gently on it. Keely stepped willingly into his arms, noting that when they were both barefoot he didn't seem quite so short. She closed her eyes, a small, intense war being fought within herself. She wanted so badly to surrender to this feeling of being warm and safe and protected, wanted to give up the worry she felt pressing on her shoulders and let Phil take care of her for a night. At the same time, she remembered what her mother had so often told her about taking care of herself and always, always remaining independent. Would it be so terrible, she thought, to put away the fear for the night and try to just be a normal girl alone in a quiet house with a normal boy?

She raised her head from his shoulder with an effort, and looked into his dark, quiet eyes. He smiled, and ran a knuckle down her cheek. "I don't think I've ever seen you without any makeup before," he said quietly. "You're gorgeous, Keel."

She smiled, feeling warmth growing in her belly that had nothing to do with the shower. "I don't think you've ever given me a straight-up compliment like that before," she said.

"Well, it's generally not a good idea to tell your best friend they're gorgeous," he said, sitting on the edge of his bed and drawing her down with him. "Is it?"

"I might have liked it if you did," she said, and stifled a yawn.

"Well, you can have compliments every day from now on, if you want. Even multiple times a day."

"I might be able to live with that." Keely glanced around his room. "Am I staying here?"

"If you mind, the Wizard can make another bed."

She smiled. "No. But thanks for the offer."

Phil slid underneath his blankets and drew her down to lie next to him. The sheets were cool against her skin, but he was a warm, steady presence. "How do we do this?" Phil asked, as they tried to get comfortable. "I think we have too many arms."

"No, they're just in inconvenient places." After several moments of mutual tossing and turning, Phil ended up on his back. Keely stretched out on her stomach, half on top of him, and rested her cheek against his shoulder. His arms circled her smaller body, pulling the blankets up securely around them before finding resting places against her skin. "Is this okay?" Keely asked, hoping he wouldn't want to move. She adored the thought of falling asleep just like this, feeling the rise and fall of his chest under her cheek, hearing the bass notes of his heartbeat, his hands locked firmly around her body.

"Perfect," Phil said, tightening his arms around her. The comforting weight of her body was welcome, and he nuzzled the top of her blond head gently. Thoughts of his recent conversation with his mother returned as he held Keely close. He had never before thought of Keely as vulnerable—she certainly didn't have Tia's brash self-assurance, but she had a quieter kind of confidence that rarely faltered. He was afraid for her now, however; afraid of whatever might be hurting her. She didn't know—nobody knew—just what it was that had opened her skin and drawn blood, didn't know what had made her so cold that she couldn't warm up without help. He rubbed her back slowly, slipping one hand underneath her stretchy camisole and reveling in the smooth slide of skin beneath his palm. She sighed contentedly, sleepily, the exhalation seeming to take all the tension out of her body. He felt her muscles relaxing, her body melting and conforming even more closely to the shape of his.

Could it be possible, Phil wondered, for Mandy Teslow to love her daughter and yet cause her so much worry and hurt? He wondered if Keely's recent problems with her mother might be the cause of her dreams, if maybe they were somehow a powerful mental manifestation of her emotional state. It was a thought to suggest in the morning, anyway. His mother had been right—at three in the morning there was very little they could do about it.

Phil craned his neck and looked at the girl who had been part of his life since he had first come to this crazy century, who had been a staunch companion and friend no matter how much trouble he had fitting in. She was asleep, her cheeks touched with pink, her eyelashes fluttering slightly as she dreamed. He hoped they were peaceful dreams, but if they weren't he'd be there. For the first time he felt a sudden prick of apprehension about the future—their future. He found it difficult to think past summer, and even more difficult to think past their last year of high school. But what then? Would his parents want to go back to their own, rightful time? Would he be forced to choose between the close-knit family he had always known and the girl he desperately loved? If so, he didn't know what he was going to do. He couldn't abandon Keely—he knew that deep in his heart, knew it with a surety that went beyond factual analysis. But what about his family? His own future? Did he belong in this century? Could he function in it permanently, as a responsible adult? He frowned suddenly, as a new thought hit him that he had never considered before. Even were he to go back to the future and get the injection reversed, would he and Keely be able to have children someday? Or was his genetic makeup too dissimilar, after having an extra hundred-odd years of evolution that Keely didn't?

But Keely shifted in her sleep, then, and one of her legs stretched across his. He found it impossible to worry about the future with her body so close to his, separated only by thin cotton. She smelled like his soap, and like sleep, and her calm face as she slept was impossibly fetching. He curled his arm around her hip, resting his hand on the jutting curve of bone, and rubbed her bent knee with his other hand. He fell asleep quicker than he thought, and did not dream.


	7. Chapter 7

**Author's Note:** Happy Saturday, everybody! Although at this point it might actually be Sunday for non-West Coast people. Anyway, this chapter's a wee shorter than I usually post but I figured you could live with it since the last chapter was so long. There's no actual Phil or Keely in this chapter, but there _is_ a little Via and Owen, and plenty of gossip. I think I like writing gossip. Gossip is funny...on the page, anyway.

* * *

Pim threw herself on the couch and crossed her arms, heaving a sigh and pointedly not looking at her father as he paced. "All right," he said. "All right! I think I'm a pretty good sport most of the time, but dressing him up like an alien and leaving him for Hackett? That's a little much even for you, don't you think?"

"Wicked," Owen said approvingly from the floor, his bleached-orange hair sticking out in all directions. He put his chin on the coffee table and watched the exchange avidly, like an amusing television show.

"How were we supposed to know he was such a sound sleeper?" Pim said, opening her big blue eyes wide and staring up at her father.

"Don't play innocent," Mrs. Diffy said, walking into the room and coming to stand next to her husband. "That only works on your father, and the both of us are here."

"Well, he did sleep pretty soundly," Little Danny piped up.

"He did," Owen chimed in, nodding emphatically. "He snores even louder than me."

"Bradley is in the laundry room washing off the paint and makeup," Barb said, "and when he comes back I want you two to apologize to him. Then everyone ought to get back to sleep."

"Do I have to apologize too, Mrs. Diffy?" Owen asked quickly. "I didn't do anything, but I didn't stop them either."

"You weren't even awake," Pim said.

"Should I apologize for not being awake?"

Pim opened her mouth to let loose another insult—likely one about someone's apparent lack of brain cells—but her mother cut her off. "No, Owen, sweetie," she said, putting a hand on his head for an instant. "And Pim will let you and Seth get back to sleep as soon as she apologizes to Bradley." She shot her daughter a significant look, which was returned with a bland blue stare.

"But I didn't even get to yell…" Lloyd said as she took his arm and led him back up the stairs. Everyone waited until they heard the click of the bedroom door shutting behind the adults.

Little Danny let out a deep breath and Pim eyed him and the older boys suspiciously. "Who ratted us out?" she demanded. Seth swallowed convulsively.

"Was it you, Wossmer?" she asked, narrowing her eyes and leaning forward. She stopped an inch from his nose. "Spill it."

"I didn't do it!" he said, digging the heels of his hands into his eyes. "Enough already with the evil eye!"

"Where's Phil?" Pim asked suddenly. "Wasn't he supposed to stay down here with you?"

"He's sulking because his girlfriend got sent home," Owen said. "Went to sleep in his own room. Or maybe he just wanted to be…alone." He shot Seth a look, and Seth turned bright red. "You know. With his…feelings."

"There's a lady present," Seth managed to say.

"What am I missing?" Little Danny asked, looking from one older boy to the other.

"That's my brother you're talking about," Pim said, "and I think I'm going to blow chunks."

"Come on, all guys do it," Owen said.

"Do what?" Bradley asked, coming into the room in a spare t-shirt and sweat pants of Phil's. Even though Phil was a compact person, Bradley was swimming in his clothes.

"Do you think they've—you know—done it yet?" Little Danny asked, dropping his voice and leaning toward Owen as if he were afraid the people upstairs would hear him.

"Nope," Owen replied instantly.

"Can we change the subject?" Pim waved her hand in front of Owen's eyes, then snapped her fingers. "Hello? Earth to imbeciles! Come in, please."

"How do you know?" Bradley asked, coming around the couch to sit on the edge of the coffee table. His hair was wet and there was still a smear of green makeup on the back of his neck.

"The O-Dog's got his ways," Owen said mysteriously.

"I give up," Pim said, and heaved herself off the couch. She socked Bradley in the shoulder with a closed fist. "I'm supposed to tell you I'm sorry for dressing you up like an alien and leaving you in Hackett's yard."

Nobody was paying attention. "Come on," Little Danny said. "Please?"

Seth dug in his backpack and pulled out a notepad and a pencil. "Is it a mathematical formula?" he asked. "Is she X and he's Y?" He poised the pencil for taking down anything Owen said. "Or—oh—or is she the unknown third factor? Are we going to have to go into exponentials? Because I think I left my calculator outside."

Everyone stared at him for a long moment. "Math, my friend, has nothing to do with it," Owen said, slapping Seth on the back once. "It's much, much more official—and complicated—than that."

"Says the kid who turned his hair orange by accident," Pim said. "Are you seriously going to take the word of this…this invertebrate-headed miscreant?"

The three boys considered this for a moment. "Yeah, pretty much," they all agreed.

"Prepare to be amazed," Owen said, and he reached into his bag. He pulled out his phone and dialed a number. It rang twice before Via picked up.

"How did you get this number?" she demanded. "I changed it on purpose, you know."

"The O-Dog's—"

"Got his ways, I know," she finished. "The question is, does he have a point?"

Owen's eyes scanned the circle of faces watching him. "Seth!" he said.

"Seth?"

"Seth wants to know if you ladies would come down here for a sec."

"Why?" The voice was instantly suspicious.

"We just want to ask you an innocent little question," Owen said.

"With you, there's no such thing as an innocent little question." She disconnected the call, and after a moment they heard the door of the guest bedroom open. Tia, Via, and Debbie Berwick entered the living room a minute later. Debbie was dressed in a pink nightgown with a ruffled hem. Via was wearing a dark red camisole and striped pajama pants. Tia was in a vastly-oversized t-shirt, and if she had anything on under it there was no way to tell. It was stained with green smudges and smears, the cause of which became entirely apparent when the girls stepped fully into the lamplight.

The girls had dyed a fat wedge of Debbie's hair green.

"Good color on you," Pim flatlined.

"Thanks," Debbie and Tia both said.

Via threw herself on the loveseat, and drew Debbie down to sit next to her. "Don't get too close to him," she said, eyeing Owen. "Trust your girls to have your back."

Tia flopped into the spot Pim had vacated on the couch. "So," she said, "what's so important, then?" She waved a hand in Bradley's face. "My nails aren't dry yet."

"You were still awake?" Bradley said. "Painting your nails? At three in the morning?"

"Looks like you were painting yourself," Via observed. Bradley rubbed the back of his neck and his hand came away green.

"Pim!" he said.

"You're just lucky Simon's dad said he couldn't come to a co-ed sleepover," she said. "Otherwise you'd really have gotten it."

"Back to the topic at hand," Seth said, waving his pencil in the air. "Owen?"

"Right!" Owen raised his hands for quiet. "Prepare to be amazed, gentlemen." He paused for dramatic effect, then turned to Tia and Via. "Are Keely and Phil sleeping together?"

"No," the two girls said in unison.

"There," Owen said. "You see? Has the O-Dog got it or what?"

"I think that's an 'or what,'" Little Danny said, shaking his head. "You let me down, O. You let me down bad."

"But how do the girls know?" Seth asked, turning hopefully to them.

Tia shrugged. "If they were, Keely would have told us."

"But what if Phil told her not to?"

"Please," Tia scoffed. "Phil wouldn't even think of it. Keely would have, though. She would have told _him_ not to tell anyone."

"But you just said they weren't…" Bradley said, but Via cut him off.

"It was a hypothetical," she said. "Anyway, Keely hasn't come to me—"

"Or me," Tia broke in.

"Right. Or Tia, asking for advice. So they're not."

"But…"

"No buts!" Tia said, holding up one recently-manicured finger. "The psychics have spoken." She rose and swept back up the stairs.

"That settles that, then," Pim said, "and I, for one, am voting that we never bring the subject up ever—ever—again."

"Nobody cares what you think, lawbreaker," Bradley muttered.

"You know," Seth said carefully, "I've heard that mocking Phil's sister here can be hazardous to your health."

A grin spread slowly over Pim's face, but it wasn't a comforting sight. "I like that one, Wossmer," she said. "Little Danny—get me a Surgeon General's warning label printed up. Something I can put on stickers would be convenient." She leaned close to Bradley. "I take it back, Farmer—I'm not sorry after all. Oh, and I wouldn't recommend going back to sleep tonight if I were you."

"I need _something_ to put in my guidebook of socially-acceptable high school behavior," Seth said, tapping his notepad. "Got anything else, since you gypped me on the mathematical formula, O-Dog?"

"Ask away, my friend," Owen said genially.

"When _do_ most kids—you know—do it?" Little Danny asked.

"Depends how hot they are," Owen answered automatically. "Got any snacks, Mini Diffy?"

"Not for you," Pim said, wrinkling her nose in an expression of intense disgust, "and if you _ever_ call me that again I'm using your underwear to wash the car. No." She paused. "Not a car. The lunch dishes in the school cafeteria."

"As long as it's a second-day pair," Seth said, shrugging.

"Second-day pair?" Bradley moved away from Seth. "I don't think I want to know."

"Suit yourself. That tip's already in my guidebook."

"Focus, people!" Owen held up his hands. "Owen's willing to dispense invaluable advice here. This kind of opportunity doesn't come around every day."

"Goodie." Via sounded somewhat less than thrilled. "Don't you want to go back upstairs, Deb?"

"Why?" the younger girl asked. "Tia will just be on the phone with her boyfriend."

"I kind of wondered, too," Bradley said carefully. "Sometimes it seems like everyone else is doing it—or, at least, has done it. Everyone in school is all paired up, practically, and everyone on TV too—"

"Not on Nickelodeon," Seth interrupted quickly.

"Right." Little Danny laughed. "I think we all know that the kids on kids' channels aren't real kids at all."

Seth looked up with big eyes. "Take that back," he said. "About Spongebob, at least."

"No," Little Danny said, "I mean, the characters don't act like normal kids. They're all always rich, and they have dumb problems. They talk about kissing, sometimes, but never about sex. They don't have real problems in school. And even if their parents do _happen_ to be divorced or anything, it's not a big deal."

"That's a valid point," Via said. "They never have eating disorders or depression. Snobby girls and bullies usually get what's coming to them—not like in the real world, where they're _rewarded_ for their behavior."

"Don't look at me," Pim said, holding up her hands. "That's what I _like_ about TV. If it was realistic it wouldn't be fun anymore. It would be just like life." She banged her fist on the coffee table. "I fully support unrealistic images of teenagers on kids' television shows."

"Don't you think it would be smarter to have shows that show us how we should deal with _real_ problems?" Via countered. "I mean, really real problems, not the silly ones made up in some la-la fantasy world."

"Nope." Pim crossed her arms over her chest. "I already know how to handle my problems, babycakes. All it takes is an industrial-sized vat of Sabotage Glue, some night-vision goggles, and camouflage grease paint."

"Grease paint?" Bradley looked at his stained hand. "Is that what's on me? I have sensitive combination skin!"

"Grow up, Farmer."

"That's really the problem, isn't it?" Seth said slowly.

"Grease paint?"

"No. Growing up."

"We're more grown-up than our parents were at our age," Via said, nodding.

"And they were more grown-up than their parents," Little Danny said quickly. "And they think they can tell us what we _should_ be worried about by showing it to us on TV. But it doesn't work."

"So what _are_ you worried about?" Owen raised his head from where he had been resting it on the coffee table. "Before I go back to sleep."

Everyone was silent for a long moment. The mantel clock ticked loudly. The sound of a jet overhead filled the silence with its sonic presence. Nobody met anybody else's eyes, staring instead at the floor, at the glowing lamp, at the shadows in the kitchen behind the couch.

Bradley Farmer swallowed. "I-I'm afraid I'm the only guy above the eighth grade who hasn't seen a naked girl. A real one. In real life."

"I should hope you haven't!" Debbie said, covering her shocked mouth with her hand for a moment.

"I'm afraid if I don't keep my grades up I won't get a scholarship to a good college," Little Danny said. "My mom can't afford to send me without one."

"My pen-pal in Detroit says she's always afraid of lining up in front of the metal detectors before school," Via said. "She feels pretty safe in the building, but not outside it. We're all pretty lucky we don't have to worry about that in Pickford."

"Yeah." Owen grinned. "I'm afraid I'll never get Via to kiss me."

"And we're back to the kissing," Bradley said. "Who cares about kissing anymore? Even I've been kissed."

"Even _I've_ been kissed," Seth echoed.

"By who?" Pim demanded.

"Tia. And Keely, actually. It's caught on tape." His cheeks turned pink again.

"Lord, is that what you're talking about?" Pim rolled her eyes. "That's not a real kiss."

"It's close enough," Seth insisted.

"You lost the rest of us," Owen said, snapping his fingers once in front of Pim's face to catch her attention. "Mind filling us in?"

"It was Phil's first dumb video-productions project," she said, "our first year in Pickford. Keely and Tia and Seth were being complete idiots in front of the camera—dancing and playing with the smoke machine and howling. There's a blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment where the girls grabbed Seth and pecked his cheeks, one on each side."

"I didn't pass out," Seth said proudly, nodding.

"Good for you, man." Owen slapped his shoulder.

"Well, I've never been kissed," Little Danny said, tossing a sideways glance at Pim.

"That's because you're an obnoxious little weasel," she shot back, crossing her arms.

"At last—someone who needs the O-Dog's advice!" Owen said. "My main man—Double D! This is verbal gold, man; you paying attention?"

"Getting every word," Seth said, writing busily in his notebook.

"He hasn't said anything yet," Via said, taking the pencil away. He stole it back.

"Girls like cute things," Owen said, leaning close to Little Danny. He spoke solemnly. "So instead of being an obnoxious little weasel, you should be cute."

"Great advice, O," Via said, doing her best to hide a smile. "Now, how exactly does one go about following it?"

Owen opened his mouth, then closed it again.

This time Via did laugh. "I don't think I've ever seen you speechless before," she said. "Just for that—" She leaned over and dropped a kiss on his cheek. "There. You don't have to call it pity if you don't want to."

"Sweet!" Owen said. "Can I have another one if I do call it pity?"

"No."

"Can we maybe get some real advice?" Bradley said hesitantly. He began to raise his hand, then dropped it again when he remembered he wasn't in school. "Via?"

"I can try," she said, willingly enough.

"How do you go from being a kissing couple to a couple that…that does more than that?"

Owen opened his mouth, and Via slapped a hand over it without even looking at him. "Slowly and carefully," she said. "First, you have to be sure you have the right girl. Not all girls are interested in doing more, and that's their call."

"I know that," Bradley said, his face growing red. "I meant after that part."

Owen opened his mouth again and this time Via slapped her hand over it and kept it there. "If you spit on me," she said, "I will personally pay Alice Deluca to beat you senseless." Owen shook his head, and Via turned back to Bradley. "It depends," she said. "For some couples it just kind of happens, and for others it's really, really awkward and it takes a lot of time and talking. And whether it comes easily or not doesn't have anything to do with how close you are." She grinned. "I mean, look at Phil and Keely. They're best friends, and it's taken them a long time and a lot of fighting to get where they are now."

"But you said they weren't having sex."

"They're not!" She made an impatient noise and dropped her hand from Owen's mouth.

"You could keep it there," he said quickly. "If you wanted. Just in case."

"You could learn not to butt in," she shot back. "If _you_ wanted. Just in case."

"In case of what?"

"Alice Deluca."

"Oh. Right." Owen pressed his lips together and zipped them with his fingers.

"Look," Via said, "they're not having sex. But neither of them are religious and they don't have psychotically overprotective parents. They're really into each other, you know? They _fit_. For them, it's only a matter of time."

"You _guys_." Everyone turned, and saw Tia enter the room again. "You all are so cute," she said, shaking her head. "This is _such_ a Breakfast Club moment!"

Outside, the morning birds began their first sleepy singing.

Owen dug in his bag and slapped a ten-dollar bill on the table, then stole Seth's notepad and pencil. "Just a matter of time, you say?" he said. "Okay, then. Pool's open. Winner takes all. I say they do it a week before school starts." He penciled his own name on the page. "Who's next?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," Debbie said. "Is that a charity pool?" She clapped her hands. "I love charity pools! I'll match you."

Via dropped her face into her hands.

"Sure," Owen said, doing his best to hide his laughter. He wrote Debbie's name below his. "But in order to…donate…to this charity, you have to tell me when you think Phil and Keely are going to have sex."

"Not until after they're married, of course!" Debbie said, holding a hand up to her mouth. "Goodness, you ask the strangest questions!"

"O-liv-ia?" Owen asked, drawing the syllables out one by one.

"No, thank you," she said. "This is sick."

"Your loss," Owen said, shrugging. "Any other takers?"

"Homecoming," Seth said, dropping a ten on top of Owen's.

"My man Seth," Owen said, penciling in the bet, "you make me proud."

"Sorry, Pim," Little Danny said quickly, handing over two fives. "Christmas break."

"Any other takers before we close the books?" Owen asked, looking significantly at Bradley.

"Gambling is beneath me," Bradley said, crossing his arms over his chest and smearing green paint on Phil's shirt in the process.

"What the hell," Pim said, and she pulled a jar of pennies out of a cabinet. "It's probably at least ten bucks—you can count it if you really want." She put the jar down with a heavy thud on top of the paper bills.

"Right on, sister," Owen said. "What can I put you down for?"

"The year 2121," she said, crossing her arms over her chest and smirking.

Owen shrugged. "Your money," he said, and wrote Pim's bet on the notepad. "Seth's in charge of the pool." He shoved it all toward Seth, who promptly dropped the jar.


	8. Chapter 8

**Author's Note:** I decided to be mean and give y'all a cliffhanger this time...but not _too_ mean, because the next part is actually already written. Unless I decide to change it, that is. There's Pheely, but I haven't decided if I want to keep it in there. We'll see.

* * *

"Morning." Barbara caught her son and kissed the side of his head before sending him in front of her into the dining room. "Sort of." 

"It is for me," Phil said, yawning. "Last night was intense."

"You're telling me," Pim said, coming through the back door. "Ooh! Second breakfast!"

"Come on, Keely," Barbara said, beckoning to her. "Now that everyone else is gone, let's sit down and see what we can figure out."

"Figure out about what?" Pim said. She stole the seat next to Phil.

"Move it, shorty," he said.

"I wouldn't be flinging the s-word around if I were you," she shot back, and stayed where she was. Keely grinned at Phil and took the seat next to Lloyd, across from Pim. Barbara sat at the head of the table and set down plates of toast and eggs. Already on the table were bowls of fruit salad and granola.

"Is this leftover from earlier?" Phil asked, looking suspiciously at all the food. "Or are you planning to feed the entire Californian contingent of the U.S. Coast Guard?"

"Oh," Lloyd said, filling a plate, "mysteries always go better with food. Don't you think so?"

"I sure do," Pim said, pouring juice. She paused. "What mystery?"

"Keely's been having bad dreams, honey," Barbara said.

Pim made a face, grabbed her plate, and stood up. "I'm eating outside. Talking about dreams is possibly one of the most boring habits of people in _any_ century."

"Suit yourself." Barbara turned to Phil. "Did you all sleep all right once everything settled down?"

He nodded. "No more dreams, as far as I could tell. Keel?"

"Not that I remember." She licked yogurt off of her thumb and picked up her spoon. "I'm just glad we didn't disturb the rest of the party."

"Oh, the other kids were up the rest of the night talking," Lloyd said dismissively, waving his fork.

"Some things never change, no matter what century it is," Barbara added, stirring cream into her coffee. "Slumber parties weren't invented for sleeping." She tapped her spoon against the lip of her coffee cup and took a long drink. "Real caffeine," she said, sighing happily. "There's just no substitute."

"Substitute?" Keely looked up from where she was making a slimy mess of pink yogurt and granola in her bowl.

"In 2062 caffeine is outlawed," Phil explained. "The soda, energy drink, and coffee manufacturers formed a secret society bent on increasing the work week and eliminating paid vacation time, all so that people would rely even more on caffeine to get them through the day. When the world found out, the United States and the European Union banned caffeine outright. Most countries followed suit—except China, who had secretly been funding part of the operation."

"Oh."

"Now, Keely," Barbara said, buttering toast, "I know your memories might be a little hazy, but try to tell us as much as you can remember about these dreams. Any little detail might be the key we need to unlock them."

"I can try." Keely put her spoon down and thought for a minute. "It's always night. There's this house—a ruin. It's big, and it looks like it was really, really fancy once. Elegant, you know? But forgotten. Abandoned." She closed her eyes, trying to will the images from the dream back into her mind with a clearer focus. "Burned," she said. "There was a fire—the place is all ashes. But…but it looks like even the fire was a long time ago. There's vines on the walls, and patches of moss on the floors. Even on the furniture."

"Good," Mrs. Diffy said. "Go on. What happens when you're there?"

"I-I'm alone," Keely said, swallowing. Her eyelids fluttered, but she kept them closed. "Always alone." She stopped abruptly, remembering the change in this last dream. "No," she said slowly. "That's not true. Sometimes I can feel something watching me. But I never see anybody. It makes me afraid." She shivered. "It's always cold, but I don't think it ever made me _that_ cold before. Not like last night."

"You were showing hypothermic signs last night," Barbara said. "You would have known if it had happened before."

"Then it hasn't." Keely opened her eyes. "It didn't hurt me at first. I was afraid, but I thought they were just dreams, you know? That they would eventually go away. But then I fell in my dream and cut myself—right around the time you all decided to come back. And when I woke up I was actually hurt."

"That was a while ago," Lloyd said, frowning. "Did it happen again?"

"Not till last night, but the stupid thing won't heal."

He shot a glance at Barbara, who raised an eyebrow. "I'd better have a look at it, then," she said. "We may have to use the Medic, despite the risks."

Phil saw Keely staring at his mother with an expression of bewildered disbelief. At first he couldn't for the life of him think why she should be so confused, but then he laughed. "Keel," he said, reaching across the table and putting his hand over hers, "my mom's actually a doctor."

"She is?" Keely's eyes grew bigger. "Then, why…?"

"Why do I stay at home?" Barbara laughed. "Sweetie, Lloyd is an engineer back in our century, but in this century he works at a hardware store. What on earth would I do trying to be a doctor in this century using technology I know nothing about?" She smiled. "Besides, I'm not in private practice; I'm in research. I _am_ working, in fact, while we're here. I'm learning so much about this culture, and where our future ideas come from."

"I guess I never really thought about it before," Keely said, "but how, exactly, _do_ you manage to support a family on one part-time paycheck?"

"Two," Lloyd said. "Curtis works at the store too, remember. But our paychecks actually go to charity."

"Then how do you live?"

"Oddly enough," Lloyd said, "the waste from the time machine's temporal pulse valve is highly prized in this century. I've sold two or three of the little nuggets on online auction since we've been here, and we live off the proceeds." He held up a finger, went to the kitchen, and came back with a silver bag. "Here," he said, and poured a stream of diamonds into Keely's palm.

"This is waste from your time machine?" Keely shook her head and poured them back into the bag. "I shouldn't be surprised. I just shouldn't be surprised by anything you Diffys say anymore."

"Us? The way you twenty-first century people throw away aluminum foil is mind-boggling!" Lloyd snorted and stowed the bag back under the kitchen sink. "There's just no accounting for your mysterious ancient ways," he muttered.

"Getting back to the topic," Phil said loudly.

"Right." Barbara looked at Keely. "Is there anything else you can remember? Anything at all?"

Keely nodded. She felt a shiver of cold fear run down her spine just thinking about this part, but she didn't really have a choice. "Bones," she said, her voice low. "I didn't realize it at first, but there was a room. It was dark and shadowed, and I didn't realize what I was looking at. They just looked like more piles of broken junk. Then the moon came out, and I saw what they really were." She shivered, and gripped her spoon in a tense fist. "They were everywhere, buried in the rubble. Piles and piles of bones—human bones—skulls and leg bones and arm bones, and little bones. _Everywhere_."

Barbara sat back in her chair, looking thoughtful. She played with her necklace, running the pendant along the chain, and opened her mouth. Before she could say anything, Keely opened her eyes again. "Oh!" she said. "I almost forgot. Always—_always_—there's a baby crying."

"I thought you said you were alone," Phil said.

"I am. I don't see it, but I hear it."

"That's not good," Lloyd said. "For centuries and centuries dreaming about children has always meant bad luck."

Barbara shot him a look. "Honey," she said, "that's just superstition. I think even Dr. Dream would agree that there's absolutely no truth to those folk stories."

"If there were no truth to them, why do they survive so long?" he countered.

"Because people have an innate need to believe that their misfortunes are caused by something other than themselves," Barbara said. "Lloyd, you know this. What is religion, but an organized cultural defense mechanism?"

Keely leaned toward Phil across the table. "Is religion banned in the future too?" she whispered as his parents argued.

"No," he said, "just fanaticism."

"Right."

"Keely," Barbara said, abruptly ending her argument with her husband, "I want to look at that gash on your foot, if you don't mind. I'd also like to try an experiment, if you're willing."

"Anything," Keely said, her tone heartfelt. "I'd do anything to stop these dreams."

"I don't know if it will stop them," she said, "but it might give me a better understanding of what we're dealing with."

"Can Phil stay?"

"Of course." Barbara smiled. "Is everybody done with breakfast?"

"Breakfast again!" Curtis howled, bolting into the room.

"Everyone except Curtis." Lloyd rose and crumpled his napkin into a ball. "I'll be in Pim's room. She wants me to look for that bug she can't find. Personally I think she either downloaded it herself and won't admit it, or it doesn't exist." He patted Keely's shoulder absently before leaving the room.

Keely giggled. "I wish I had a dad like your dad," she said, following Phil and his mother into the living room.

"Sometimes I wish I had a dad like your dad," Phil said, rolling his eyes.

"But I don't have one."

"Exactly."

"Oh, hush," Barbara said, and she activated the device in her hand. It was black and silver, not the cool metallic blue of the Wizard or Insta-morph. "It's human nature to want what other people have, if only because it's human nature to want to experience everything life has to offer." The screen on the Medic came to life, glowing green. "Adolescent female," Barbara told it. Keely leaned over and watched as the outline of a human female body appeared on the screen. "This won't hurt," Barbara told her. "Just let me see that ankle."

Keely stood up, still in the clothes she had slept in, and held out her bare foot. "Put it right there," Barbara said, and Keely rested her foot on the couch cushion. She caught Phil's hand for balance. His mother trained the Medic on Keely, and a wide beam of green light hit her skin. "It's warm," Keely whispered, as the light swept from the top of her anklebone to the sole of her foot once.

"You can sit down now," Mrs. Diffy said, her eyes trained on the screen. She scrolled through the data a couple of times, her brows drawn together in concentration. "That's exceedingly odd."

"What is?" Phil asked, drawing Keely down to sit next to him. She leaned into his side and he slid his arms around her. "Is there something wrong?"

"No—and that's what's odd," his mother replied. "There's no infection, and as far as I can tell there's nothing wrong with Keely that would inhibit the healing process." She turned the Medic off. "All I can tell you is to keep it clean, and try not to wear shoes that rub it."

"Already been doing that," Keely replied. "But it's nice to know there's nothing weird going on."

"Not that it helps. I'm sorry, sweetie." Barbara stood up and opened the cabinet where the Virtu-Goggles were kept. "Now, you tell me if you're not comfortable with this. I can hook the Medic up to the goggles, if you're willing, and use it to access your thoughts." She held up her hand. "Now, I know what you're thinking. The Medic will only show me certain thoughts. What I want you to do is try to replay the dreams in your memory, so I can see what you're seeing."

Phil looked at his mother suspiciously. "You think you know what's going on," he said.

"No," she replied, "but I do have a suspicion that I know what Keely is seeing. If it is what I think it is, it's easily fixed."

"Really?" Keely looked relieved. "Thank goodness!" She leaned forward, and Phil relinquished his hold on her waist. "What do I have to do?"

"Just put these on," Barbara said, handing her a pair of Virtu-Goggles, "and relax while I calibrate the Medic to the frequency of your brainwaves."

"Will it hurt?" Keely asked, hesitating.

"You won't feel a thing," Mrs. Diffy promised. "Phil, honey, load a blank screen for her, will you?"

Phil took the Virtu-Goggles from Keely and set the reality parameters to zero. "All you'll see is black," he said gently, helping her slide them on. He pulled a loose wisp of light hair off of her face. "I'll squeeze your hand when she's ready, and you try to replay the memory of your dreams with as much clarity as you can."

"Got it." Keely put her hand trustingly into his, and Phil activated the program. He felt her stiffen, then relax. "It's dark," she whispered.

"I know," Phil whispered back, though he knew she couldn't hear him.

"Got her," Barbara said. "Go ahead, Phil. Give the signal." She held up the Medic, her entire attention focused on the screen.

Phil squeezed Keely's hand, then released it and stood up. He walked behind the couch and peered over his mother's shoulder at the glowing green screen of the Medic. In the upper left-hand corner was a box with the rapidly-fluctuating lines of Keely's brainwaves. In the upper right-hand corner was a scrolling list of vitals that he didn't bother to read and didn't think he'd likely understand anyway.

The entire bottom of the screen was filled with blackness. Barbara beckoned to Phil, and he turned off the lights in the kitchen and closed the living room blinds. Slowly the opaque blackness melted into the image of a ruined house. It shifted blurrily as Keely turned her virtual head. Phil leaned closer to the screen, his head almost level with his mother's. He gazed at the crumbling walls and the piles of ashy ruin, just as Keely had described them.

"Would you look at that," his mother breathed in wonder.

"What?" he whispered back.

She tapped Keely's scrolling vital signs. "Her core body temperature just dropped."

"Is that bad?"

"Well, it's not good, certainly." She returned her attention to the scene slowly unfolding on the bottom portion of the screen. "I can't imagine how it's happening…"

"I thought you said you knew." Phil watched as the images shuddered; Keely must have stumbled. Was that how she had cut herself?

"No, I said I had an idea of what she was seeing. _How_ it's happening is something else entirely."

"How can you fix it if you don't know—"

"Hush—look!" Barbara interrupted him, holding up a hand. They had entered the kitchen, the table strewn with cracked dishes, the floor littered with shards of glass and porcelain.

"Do you have volume on this thing?" Phil whispered, and his mother nodded. She touched a control, and suddenly the uneven sound of Keely's frightened breathing filled the room. Phil looked involuntarily at the girl sitting on the other end of the couch, though he knew the sound wasn't actually coming from her. "Mom," he said, "look."

She glanced up from the screen for a moment. Keely was shivering, her knees tucked close to her chest and her arms wrapped around them. "Her core temp's dropped again," she said, her eyes flicking back to her screen.

"Should we stop this?" Phil reached out and brushed the back of his fingers across the nape of Keely's neck. Even the hidden sweep of skin underneath her hair was cold.

"It's amazing that she's having this reaction even to just the memories," Barbara mused, as if she hadn't heard him.

"She's only used the Virtu-Goggles a couple of times," Phil replied. "She's not really used to them, or how overpowering the experience can be." He was beginning to feel uneasiness pricking at his stomach. "Come on—let's pull her out. This isn't right."

His mother opened her mouth, but before she could say anything the piercing sound of a baby's wail filled the room. Both sets of eyes immediately turned back to the screen, but as Keely had said, there was no sign of any other living thing in the house. She was, as far as they could tell, alone.

A sudden spike in one of the fluctuating green lines made Barbara scan quickly through Keely's vitals. "There's another mystery," she said, shaking her head.

"Another what?" Phil looked at Keely, and he was somehow unsurprised to see that the gash on her ankle had reopened. "She's bleeding again," he said.

"I know that." Barbara sighed in frustration. "I saw it happen. But does that mean I know _how_ it happened? No. Of course not."

"Mom, come on." Phil moved away from the screen and leaned over the back of the couch, slipping his arms around Keely. She was tight and tense, her muscles knotted with cold as she shook. He kissed the top of her head and held her firmly.

"Phil, stop that," his mother said. "You're messing with my temperature readings." Phil reluctantly let go. "Look, it's all right here," she continued. "We'll pull her out if her core temperature drops much lower, but she's in no danger at the moment."

"I didn't say she was in danger," Phil said, though somehow he felt it. "I just said I don't think it's right to be putting her though this again."

"She wanted answers," she replied, "and, unfortunately, sweetie, this is the only way to get them."

Phil stepped back behind his mother and peered over her shoulder again. "What's that?" he asked.

"Oh…my." Barbara put a hand over her mouth as they stepped through a doorway, and just at that same moment the moon overhead illuminated the dark piles strewn around the room. Gleaming in the murky darkness were shining white bones. Human femurs and tibias, portions of fibula and sternum, bits of rib and spine. Carpals and metacarpals. The rounded curve of a pelvis, broken splinters that used to be a heel. Teeth everywhere.

The screen narrowed and zoomed in on one pile as the virtual Keely crouched next to it. They saw her hand reach out—slowly, shaking—and her fingertips brush the side of a tiny infant jaw. Its perfect baby teeth were still rooted in the bone. Louder than ever, the baby wailed again….

And above even the sound of the ghostly cry, the Medic's warning alarm suddenly went off. "Keely!" Phil yelled, and lunged for her as she collapsed.


	9. Chapter 9

**Author's Note:** This will probably be my last update until after the holiday, so I tried to make it a good one. There's a little smut and a few answers...sort of. We're not nearly through yet, though. Thank you to those of you still on the ride!

* * *

"Oh…my." Barbara put a hand over her mouth as they stepped through a doorway, and just at that same moment the moon overhead illuminated the dark piles strewn around the room. Gleaming in the murky darkness were shining white bones. Human femurs and tibias, portions of fibula and sternum, bits of rib and spine. Carpals and metacarpals. The rounded curve of a pelvis, broken splinters that used to be a heel. Teeth everywhere. 

The screen narrowed and zoomed in on one pile as the virtual Keely crouched next to it. They saw her hand reach out—slowly, shaking—and her fingertips brush the side of a tiny infant jaw. Its perfect baby teeth were still rooted in the bone. Louder than ever, the baby wailed again….

And above even the sound of the ghostly cry, the Medic's warning alarm suddenly went off. "Keely!" Phil yelled, and lunged for her as she collapsed. The warm green numbers of her vitals suddenly turned yellow and started blinking rapidly. Phil caught her before she could fall forward and tumble off the couch, and his mother reached forward and snatched the Virtu-Goggles from her face. The sound of the child immediately stopped, but the Medic's furious alarm didn't.

"I told you we should have pulled her out earlier!" Phil yelled. He climbed clumsily over the back of the couch and pulled Keely's unresponsive form close. Suddenly she tensed, and cried out.

"It's not that," his mother said, darting into the kitchen. She was back again almost immediately with a silver medical case. She flipped it open, and from one foam-lined compartment she selected a glass vial of green fluid. She fed several milliliters into a tiny blue syringe, then twisted on the thinnest needle Phil had ever seen in his life. "Give me her arm," she said, which was easier said than done. Keely was still screaming, and while Phil was certain she had no idea where she was or what was going on, she did not seem inclined to cooperate. She was wiry but strong, and it was all he and his mother could do to keep her arm extended and still for the five seconds it took to insert the needle and inject its contents.

Two seconds later she stopped screaming, and Phil didn't breathe until he saw her back rise with a full, trembling breath. Relief flooded through him, sharp and bittersweet. Keely's head lay pillowed on his lap, and he was afraid to move or even touch her for fear she might start screaming again. Carefully, ever so carefully, he reached down and drew her hair away from her face.

His mother had no such qualms. "I was afraid of this," she said, kneeling on the floor next to Keely's head and rubbing her back sympathetically. "Playing with neurons like that was just too much for her system to handle."

Keely's eyes fluttered, but they didn't open. Phil worked up the courage to put his hand on her back, over the sharp, jutting angle of her shoulder blade. He felt his own heart pounding in his throat, and he looked up with wide eyes as his father and Pim thundered down the stairs.

"What's wrong?" Lloyd demanded. He turned his head from left to right and back again. "Where's the baby?"

"There was no baby," Barbara said, rising. "We were trying an experiment and Keely's system rejected the cellular intrusion of the Medic." She put her hand on Phil's head. "Poor thing."

"She's still freezing cold," Phil said. "And I don't think she's conscious."

"She'll be in and out for a little while because of the antidote," his mother said, "and for this reason I don't think it's a good idea to try to put her back in the shower to thaw her out." She turned the Medic back on and trained it on Keely.

"Mom, don't!" Phil said. He put out a hand, but it was impossible to try to shield Keely when she was on top of him.

"It's okay, Phil," she reassured him. "The antidote I gave her should alleviate any problems from now on. It's an amazingly handy little liquid." She glanced at the Medic in her hand, scrolling through Keely's vitals. "The only drawback is that you have to actually be in cellular shutdown for it to work." She turned the Medic off and put it down. "Her core body temperature is low, but I expected that. I can't see any other problems. Let's get her warm and let her sleep this off—there shouldn't be many side effects, since we caught the technology rejection so quickly."

Phil let his mother help him out from under Keely's unconscious frame, and then he slid his hands under her knees and behind her back and lifted her carefully into his arms. She was heavier than he expected, and so tall that carrying her was awkward. He didn't offer to let anyone else help him though, as he made his way cautiously up the stairs.

"Lloyd," Barbara said as soon as Phil was out of earshot, "this is serious."

* * *

Phil lowered Keely carefully to the bed, then drew the blankets quickly over her still form. He grabbed his Wizard and used it to increase the temperature in the room, and closed his windows against the summery breeze. Only then did he allow himself to sit on the edge of his bed and reach for her hand. 

"Keel?" he asked.

"Mm." She made a small noise, and her eyelids fluttered. "I think so."

Phil felt relief again, palpable and intense, and the knots in his stomach loosened slightly. "How do you feel?" he asked gently.

"Cold." Her blue eyes opened and attempted to focus on him. "Will I ever be warm again?"

"I'll remind you of that question in August," he said, smiling. "What can I do, Keel?"

"Warm me up, please," she said, reaching out her arms.

Keely felt fuzzy and disjointed—like accidentally taking too much NyQuil—and couldn't quite remember how she had ended up in Phil's bed. That she was in his bed she had no doubt. She could smell the clean linen smell, could feel the unfamiliar weight of his blankets, so unlike her own. What had happened?

She remembered being back in her dreams, and remembered the terror as the cut on her ankle was torn open again, remembered the gritty feeling of the tiny jawbone beneath her fingertips. Then blackness, and an intense pain that came from everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Vaguely, as if from underwater, she remembered the sound of voices yelling. Then numbness—welcome and blessed.

Now the numbness was slowly receding and, though the pain did not return, the bitter cold was running in her veins again. She shook, unable to stop herself and unable to find warmth.

But Phil was there, sliding like water into her arms, and he covered her mouth with his own and kissed her. She pressed her hands against the hot velvet of his skin, reaching fingers clumsy with cold up under his shirt to find warmth. He released her for an instant and pulled his shirt off, then drew her into his arms again. He held her tightly, almost desperately, and through the fog that had settled over her mind Keely had the vague notion that probably she had frightened him. She opened her mouth to apologize, though she hadn't the faintest idea what she had done, but his lips were on hers again and she abandoned the attempt.

Was this drowning? she wondered idly. Phil's tongue grazed her lower lip and she opened her mouth slightly, feeling the feather-light touch of his lips before their mouths locked again. This fogginess, the waves of numbness followed by intense feeling, the cold threatening to overtake her with every breath—was this how drowning victims felt? Did they know the water would take them? Toward the end, did they accept it? Wish for it, perhaps? For the peace surely lurking in the aftermath?

Phil was breathing quickly, raggedly—she could hear the sound almost as liquid rushing in her ears. The hiss of his sheets as they moved and the catch of his breath as he exhaled were the only noises she heard beyond the erratic bassline of her own shallow heartbeat. His hands moved as their bodies moved—first sliding up her back, then pressing firm upon her belly. She thought she could feel the heat of them through her camisole, but she wasn't entirely sure. Desperately craving more warmth—more of what, it seemed, he was able to give—she reached down and grasped the hem of her shirt with both her fists. With one long, fluid movement she drew it off and let it drop, and she curled back into the circle of his arms. They closed around her, skin-to-skin for the first time, and immediately an intense shock jolted through her body. It woke her up a little, enough to realize that the tight knots of ice in her muscles were beginning to melt and fade. She pressed closer to him, slipping her arms under his and holding his hard, compact frame tightly. She tucked her head under his chin for an instant, pressing her cold cheek against his throat, and bit the meat of his shoulder.

He made a strange noise she wasn't sure she had ever heard before, and he kissed her hard. This _was_ drowning, she decided, and she didn't care. Only the tightest, biggest knot of ice remained in the pit of her stomach. The rest of her body was full of a strange, fuzzy heaviness, and she didn't protest as he rolled them so that she was on her back. She pressed the full length of her body against his, trying desperately to melt that last block of ice deep inside.

"Keely," he said, and she heard something in his voice she knew she hadn't ever heard before. She thought that if she could only banish the fog enveloping her mind she might even be able to interpret it. She moved a little and placed his hand on her flat belly, just where the ice was. He sat up, leaned over, and kissed her there. His tongue lapped at the soft down of her skin, swirled in the shallow indentation of her belly button. He kissed the juncture of her ribs, grated his teeth carefully along the graceful curve of bone. His hands slid up her sides and cupped the undersides of her breasts, his fingers brown against the milky expanse of her skin.

Keely sighed, the fog intruding even more heavily on her consciousness as the last icy knot in her stomach finally melted away. She closed eyes suddenly too heavy to keep open…

Phil dropped his head to her stomach and forced himself to take a deep breath. He could feel the hot, damp line his mouth had traced burning against his cheek. She was unconscious again. Her breathing had eased and deepened, and her perfect pink mouth was open in a small O. He took another breath and pushed himself off of her. "Great," he muttered. He dug in his closet and pulled out the heaviest sweatshirt he owned, and carefully dressed Keely in it. She looked ridiculously small in the shirt that was even too big for him, but at least it would keep her warm and she didn't look quite so devastatingly tempting.

In his mind's eye came, unbidden, the sight of her stretched out on his bed, the hills and valleys of her body thrown into gentle relief by the light, the perfect curves of her breasts revealed for the first time. He dropped his head into his hands, then rubbed his hair. "Just great."

Phil drew the blankets over Keely's sleeping form, tucking them in firmly around her. She turned onto her side and curled into a little ball, her expression peaceful. He wondered, suddenly, just how much of their recent actions Keely would actually remember—or how much she would have done under other circumstances. Was it all, perhaps, some strange reaction to the terrifying ordeal downstairs, or even the antidote his mother had given her? _There shouldn't be many side effects,_ his mother had said. He frowned and returned to the closet, where he kept his future gadgets. He activated his own Medic, and scrolled through its database until he found what he was looking for.

"You could have warned me," he said, then turned it off. He glanced at Keely one more time before heading out of the room to take a long shower.

* * *

"Pudding," Lloyd said, "I looked—I dug through that whole stinking machine, and I can't find your bug anywhere." He dropped onto the couch and propped his feet up on the coffee table. Barbara swatted them with a magazine and he dropped them again. 

"Oh, it's there," Pim said, pacing next to the couch. "I saw it with my own eyes, and I have flash logs that prove _something_ was downloaded. You're an engineer. Why can't you find it?"

"You're an evil genius," her father mimicked. "Why can't you find it?"

"My genius powers are lacking a little on this one," she admitted.

"Whatever it is," Barbara put in, "it doesn't seem to be hurting anything. Why don't you just let it be for now?"

"Famous last words," Pim muttered.

They heard the bathroom door close firmly upstairs, with a sound just short of a slam. "Ah," Barbara said. "Keely must be asleep again."

"Again?" Pim looked suspiciously at her mother, then held up a restraining hand. "Never mind. I decided I don't want to know. I'm going back to my room, and I'm warning you that I'm not coming out again until I find that bug." She turned to leave the room.

"So you want spaghetti for dinner, then?" Barbara asked mildly.

"You bet."

"Only if I can have meatballs the size of my fist," Lloyd said.

The sound of the shower drowned any other reply Pim might have made. Barbara waited until she heard Pim's door close, then turned to her husband. "Lloyd," she said, "this is bad."

"You said that already." He put his feet back on the coffee table. "Is this get-out-the-checkbook bad or make-a-run-for-the-future bad?"

"Try to focus here, honey."

"Focusing."

Barbara pulled out her Medic and activated the saved clip of Keely's dream-memories. She turned the volume off and played it through for Lloyd. When they reached the room of bones, she paused it. "Look familiar?"

"Like a bad dream," he said, wrinkling his nose. "Turn that creepy stuff off. You're going to give _me_ nightmares."

"Lloyd, this is stuff our kids aren't supposed to learn about until the very end of school, just before they graduate. Phil couldn't possibly have told her—so how could she know?"

"She doesn't know," he said, pushing the gadget away so he didn't have to see the piles of gleaming bones. "If she did, she wouldn't be so scared."

"If she doesn't know, how is she dreaming about something that hasn't happened yet?"

He didn't have an answer for that. They were silent for a long moment, listening to the faint sound of the running shower and the low, pulsing baseline of Pim's music. "Can you stop the dreams?" he asked finally.

"Easily enough," Barbara said. "But do you think that's the best plan? Don't you think we should tell them?"

"No." Lloyd shook his head. He reached over and turned off the device in his wife's hand. "They're not old enough yet." He shuddered. "I don't think I'm old enough yet, either."

"You know, this is going to happen within Keely's lifetime," Barbara said. "Which means…"

"I know." He cut her off. "We'll have to tell them, eventually. If only to explain why they have to say goodbye."

"That wasn't exactly what I meant."

"No?" Lloyd stared at her. "What did you mean? You can't seriously be thinking about staying!"

"No, but…" She set the Medic down and sighed. "I will admit that I've grown attached to Keely. She's such a sweet girl, and she's good for Phil. I could be taking this much harder than Mandy Teslow, you know. But I'm not. I'm trying to be the unselfish mother, here, and support the kids as they learn and grow."

"Now hang on a minute," Lloyd said. "Sweetheart, you can't make these generalizations about Keely's mother. She's doing what she thinks is right."

"Right? Right for who, exactly?" Barbara snapped. She stood up and began pacing restlessly behind the couch. "For herself, maybe. Not for that girl sleeping upstairs, or our son who loves her. It's easy to be that kind of mother and parent out of fear rather than compassion. In the end, though, you're left with grown children who don't really know how to be adults and resent you for not giving them the opportunity to learn when they were younger." She paused and slid her arms around Lloyd, resting her chin on the top of his seated head. "It's so much harder to try to walk the fine line between effective, responsible parenting and over-protectiveness. Take Keely, for instance—she's a good kid, but she desperately wants a mother she can talk to and trust."

"Barb," he said, "you know I love you. But did she tell you that, or are you maybe reading more into the situation than is really there?"

"Of course she didn't say it," Barbara said, "and how could she betray her mother by saying so? She never would! But I can tell just the same." She turned and perched on the back of the couch. "I wish I could somehow get through to Mandy. I'm afraid if I try, she'll just get offended and refuse to let Phil see Keely anymore."

"Honey," he said, "have you ever thought that maybe we're getting just a little too involved in this century—especially with Keely and her mother?"

"Lloyd, we were all involved the moment you dropped that coin and Keely picked it up. Maybe it wasn't a conscious choice, but that small action sealed us together just the same. I think everything since then has just been pushing us in the same direction."

"What are you saying, exactly?"

"I know it's against time-traveling etiquette," she said, getting to her feet, "but I'm saying that maybe we should seriously consider bringing Keely back with us when we go home. For good."

* * *

Mandy Teslow stared out the window of her hotel room, her cell phone clasped in her hand. She dialed her house telephone for a third time, and for the third time she heard the voicemail pick up. She then dialed Keely's number for the fourth time, only to receive the same response. 

She sat slowly on the couch and stared at the gleaming downtown lights, no different than the lights of any other large city. She had settled in Pickford to get away from the homogenous aggregate of sprawling city life, to give her daughter the kind of safe, sheltered upbringing she herself had experienced years ago. Now, it seemed, the shiny allure of adulthood had somehow seeped in unnoticed, and was trying to steal Keely away despite Mandy's best efforts.

Mandy wished she had had the sense to demand the Diffy's home phone number before she left, and Phil's cell number if he had one. She didn't know why Keely wasn't picking up, but worry pricked at her stomach and wouldn't let her sleep. It was getting late.

She forced herself to take a deep breath, and pulled a bottle of iced tea out of the refrigerator. Idly, she looked at her laptop, open on the room's wireless desk. An idea pricked at her mind, and she took a seat in the swiveling desk chair. She typed in the web address for her cellular service company, then entered her password. She pulled up the records for Keely's phone.

There were four numbers dialed more often than any others. The top number, she guessed, was likely Phil's cell. The second was long-distance—Tia, probably. The third and fourth were both local Pickford numbers. She didn't know what they were, so she chose the fourth one and dialed it on her own cell.

"Diffy residence." The voice was female. Mandy swallowed several times before she tried to talk.

"Mrs. Diffy—please?"

"Speaking." The voice remained pleasant, tinged with mild curiosity.

"Mrs. Diffy, it's Mandy Teslow. Keely's mother."

"Yes, of course!" the other woman said, and Mandy heard actual warmth in the voice. "Of course we remember you."

"Thank you." She cleared her throat. "I'm sorry to bother you, but I'm out of town—as I'm sure you remember. I can't seem to get a hold of Keely. I was wondering if you possibly knew where she was?"

"No," Mrs. Diffy said, "but Phil's here. Let me ask him." Mandy heard clicks and pops as Mrs. Diffy covered the mouthpiece with her hand and called for her son. "Phil!" she heard, the sound muffled and fuzzy, "Where's Keely?"

"At home, I guess." The reception cleared a little as Mrs. Diffy removed her hand from the phone. "She said Tia and Via were sleeping over," Phil added, and Mandy felt a little jolt of surprise that she already recognized his voice. It was a pleasant one, she thought involuntarily. Not too low, and he had very pronounced R's. It made him sound very West Coast.

"Did you catch that?" Mrs. Diffy said, back on the line.

"Yes, thanks. But Keely's not answering the phone." Mandy sighed. "I just don't know what to do anymore."

There was a pause. Then Mrs. Diffy said, her voice hesitant, "I know we don't know each other very well yet. But…Mrs. Teslow, if I could, I'd like to ask you a question. I don't really want the answer. I just want you to think about it, if you would. I want you to ask yourself what you find so upsetting about your daughter growing up. I mean, isn't that the job we're supposed to do? Help them grow? Keely is a sweet, bright, gorgeous young woman. She has a goal in life, and she cares deeply for other people—including my son. I'd like you to really think about what's so wrong with that, please."

The line went blank.

Mandy stared at the phone in her hand for a long minute, then dropped it on the desk. She kicked off her shoes and turned down the comforter on the bed, then slid in between the sheets. She picked up the remote control sitting next to the bed, but did not turn the television on. Instead, she turned the cold black plastic cylinder over and over in her hands. She tried to be upset at Phil's mother for the brazen question, but she couldn't dredge up enough anger. She leaned back against the pillows. The room was nearly silent, only the gentle murmur of an expensive air conditioning system and the occasional honking car horn disturbing the quiet.

Goal? What goal? Mandy slowly admitted to herself that she had no idea what goals Keely might have—whether she was considering college, or trade school, or just wanted to get married and raise a family. Her stomach twisted at the last possibility. She was manifestly not ready to think about her daughter marrying or having children, whether with her current boyfriend or anyone else.

It was funny, she thought, how sixteen seemed so old when you were there, but so young looking back over a bevy of intervening years. She remembered her own sixteen-year-old self, short and curvy, devoted to cheerleading and her part-time job in her uncle's real estate office—so different from Keely. Could they ever understand each other? Was it possible? She closed her eyes and forced herself to put aside, just for a moment, the picture in her mind's eye of a pixie face with big blue eyes, a small hand decorated with pink plastic rings, little feet held out for her sneakers to be tied. Instead she brought forth that first, stunned moment when a tall, lithe girl ran down the steps of the Diffy porch and into the front yard, wet shoulders gleaming in the summer sunshine, eyes wide and laughing as a tan boy put his hands on her and spun her around. She focused on the expression in those blue eyes—ludicrously happy and fearlessly innocent. Her breath quivered, and her throat suddenly ached. She felt wetness gathering at the edges of her eyes for the first time in…she couldn't remember how long. A long time. Since the day the door slammed and Mandy found herself staring down at a pair of big blue eyes looking up at her for answers. They weren't the sort of answers she could give through tears, and at the time the most important thing had been being strong for Keely.

When had that changed?

Unbidden, the questions Mrs. Diffy had asked rose to the surface of her mind. What was she so afraid of? What was so wrong with Keely's attachment to Phil? Mandy thought she could answer those questions, but the answers didn't make her any happier. She thought about Keely's muttered comment about Phil at least having a father, and wondered if maybe, just maybe, this intense attachment her daughter seemed to feel toward the dark-haired boy was really some sort of strange result of her father's absence. Yes, Mandy thought, relief making her smile. Of course. That was it. It had to be.

* * *

"I don't know about this." 

"Relax, Keel." Via had to raise her voice over the sound of water rushing out of the bathtub and the drumbeat from the stereo on the bathroom countertop. "I've done it a million times. It's totally hot. You'll like it—trust me."

Keely glanced apprehensively at Tia, who was sitting on the edge of the tub with a fashion magazine. "Don't look at me," she said. "I guess this is kind of a European thing."

"Actually," Via said, "it started as a South American thing."

"Whatever."

Keely pulled her rose-colored towel tighter around herself. "V," she said, "I really don't know."

"It's just hair," Tia said, turning a page. "If you don't like it, it'll grow back. Right?"

"Right," Via agreed. She pulled a new razor out of its packaging and snapped on a new blade. "You won't be sorry. Guys love it."

Keely groaned and dropped her face into her hands. "Not you, too."

"Not us what?"

Keely hoisted herself onto the bathroom counter. "Why does everyone assume I'm sleeping with Phil?"

"Are you?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"I guess…I guess I kind of look at it the other way around."

Tia raised an eyebrow, and Keely almost ran a hand through her hair before she remembered the moisture serum they had all applied. They still had at least half an hour before it was time to wash it out. "I mean," she said, "I don't think of it as, why don't we? I think of it as, why should we? Phil and I both really like where we are right now. We're happy. Why should we take that huge step—a step that might turn out really awkward and awful—when we're perfectly happy the way we are?"

"If you'd ever slept with a guy who was really, really good," Tia said, "you wouldn't be asking that question."

"Well, I haven't. And I don't plan to any time soon." Keely felt guilt pricking at her stomach the moment she uttered the last sentence. It wasn't entirely true. It was true enough that she had no actual concrete _plans_—but the constant physical tension that had been growing between herself and Phil was going to come to a head at some point. It was true, she reflected, that she enjoyed exploring the brand-new sensations of touch and expression with him. She had realized, sometime during the strange, hazy dreams brought on by Mrs. Diffy's antidote, that the intense need she felt for physical contact was probably due to a lack of it in her life. Her mother was huggy with her friends, but not with Keely. She didn't grow up with a father—someone to twirl her in the air or let her dance on his shoes—and her extended family weren't terribly expressive people. She had spent her school years hugging her girlfriends, but somehow being with Phil filled a deeper need for touch that Tia and the other girls couldn't.

At the same time, she reflected, she had to admit that what she felt for Phil went beyond a basic, intrinsic need to physically be touched. That need was satisfied when they curled up together on his couch to watch a movie, and by a thousand small touches throughout the day—holding hands in the school hallways, slipping into his arms as a greeting or good-bye, dancing together for no reason at all. She hadn't realized how much she needed that touch until suddenly Phil was there, willing to give it. But there were other kinds of touch—more electric, more frightening—that somehow went beyond that simple need. She felt nervous, anxious warmth in her cheeks and put a hand up to touch them.

"Come on," Tia said, and it didn't seem she had noticed the blush. "Haven't you at least thought about it? Wondered?"

"Of course I've wondered," Keely said. Via handed her a cold pink can of shaving gel. Keely heaved a large sigh and dropped her towel. "Fine," she said. "You win. I'll try it. But for myself—not for anyone else."

"Girl," Via said, "_now_ you're talking like a European. For yourself is the only reason to do this sort of thing." She split the plastic case on another new razor before sitting down on a kitchen chair they'd dragged into the bathroom. "It's purely coincidental if a boy happens to like it, too." She let her own towel fall away from her body and wet her razor in a cup of warm water, then squirted a palmful of shaving gel into her hand.

"With the hair or against it?" Keely asked. She paused, her own hand full of pink gel.

"With first, then against." Via glanced at Tia. "Come on," she said, "you, too."

"Oh, no." Tia shook her head vehemently. "I'm _not_ doing that myself. I'll cut myself wide open and be scarred for life. Can't we just go get it professionally waxed if we must experiment?" She gripped her fashion magazine as if it would protect her.

"Would you please stop being such an American?" Via said, rolling her eyes. "Look, there are several perfectly good reasons why we can't go do this professionally. One—we're all of us too young. Nobody in their right mind is going to give Brazilian waxing jobs to a bunch of teenage girls. Two—waxing hurts. Shaving doesn't."

"Three," Keely put in, her eyes on what she was doing and not on her friends, "I'm not letting anybody else touch me like this. Period."

"Four," Via said, reaching into the shopping bag on the floor and tossing Tia the last plastic-covered razor, "professional waxing is expensive. Keely and I don't have that kind of money just to experiment with, and I'm guessing you'd find it a little awkward to explain to your parents if it showed up on your credit card bill."

Tia was silent for half a second. "Right," she said finally. "Where's the gel?"

"Of course I'm right." Tia turned back to what she was doing. "What were you saying, Keel?"

"Just that Tia was right," Keely said. She turned on the sink faucet and rinsed her razor before squirting more gel onto her fingers. "I've wondered."

"Then why haven't you done anything about it?"

Keely thought absently about the question as she played the razor carefully over the sensitive, private areas of her skin she had never shaved before. "You know how nobody used to watch my news show until the disaster with Pim?" she said. "I realized that if kids are going to be watching me and looking to me for answers, I have a responsibility to inform instead of sell. But it's bigger than that. As a reporter and a role model, I'm responsible for what I do and say when other people are watching me."

"But they're always watching you," Via argued.

"I know. That's my point. See, even in my personal life I kind of need to act responsibly. Let's face it—as much as we might hate it, Phil and I were voted H. G. Wells' cutest couple. Other kids are watching us, and maybe even looking to us for answers about how to be a couple." She rinsed her razor again. "I can't control that. What I can control is how Phil and I act. I don't want some seventh-graders thinking it's okay for them to sleep together just because they think Phil and I are."

"Nobody knows what you're doing in private, unless you tell," Tia argued.

"Are you sure?" Keely took a damp towel and patted the foaming gel off of a section of skin. "I know in sex ed they said nobody could tell, but I'm afraid people will be able to. I mean, let's say I did sleep with Phil. I'm afraid I'd walk differently, or we'd hold hands differently, or…or something. Something so people would know."

"That's crazy talk. Ow!" Tia swore. "I told you I'd cut myself." She blotted the tiny nick with a towel. "I lost my virginity after I moved. Do I look any different to you?"

"No, but—"

"So, why do you think it would be any different for you?"

Keely cracked a small smile. "Teens are supposed to be self-centered," she said. "I guess, in that respect, I'm no different than anybody else." She looked up, listening. "Was that the phone ringing?"

"I can't hear anything over the music and the fan," Via said. "If it's important they'll leave a message."

"I guess."

"I don't buy it," Tia said. She rinsed off the last of the gel and ran a hand over her own skin. "This feels really, really weird." She stepped over to the bathroom mirror and stood on tiptoe so she could see what she'd done, turning slightly to examine it. "But it looks hot."

"Told you." Via put down her own razor. "What don't you buy?"

"Keely." Tia stepped into the shower and turned the water on, beginning to rinse the serum out of her hair. "I don't believe that's your only reason," she hollered over the noise of the shower, the radio, and the overhead fan.

"It isn't!" Keely hollered back. "But it was a good one. You were supposed to accept it and move on!"

"You can't admit that and then expect us to drop it," Via said. "Spill."

Keely slid off the counter and wet her towel at the sink. "This does feel funny," she said.

"You'll get used to it." Via stepped into the shower and pushed Tia out of the way. "My turn."

"Bitch," Tia said pleasantly, and reached for a full-sized towel hanging on the rack. "Come on, Keely. It's sharing-time."

"I'm scared, okay?" Keely decided against fighting with Via over the shower and stuck her head under the sink faucet. "Plus, I've never seen a unicorn."

"Neither have I," Tia said, wrapping her towel around her head. "Didn't stop me."

"Maybe I want to."

"Maybe you should grow up."

"Maybe you should make me." Keely wrapped a towel around her own wet hair, and re-wrapped her body in the towel she had been wearing before.

"What are you scared of?" Tia pressed. "I mean, it's _Phil_ we're talking about. He wouldn't ever hurt you."

"I know that." Keely dug through the shopping bags on the floor. They had several different lotions, avocado-based face peels, new nail polish, mango foot scrub, and organic talc-free body powder. In the refrigerator there was cold Thai takeout and strawberry soda, and they had a stack of brat-pack DVDs downstairs. They had everything they needed for a perfect girls' night. "But it's change, you know?"

The shower stopped, and Via poked her wet, gleaming head around the edge of the curtain. "As someone who moves around a lot, and therefore knows change very, very well," she said, reaching for her towels, "let me give you some advice. Change, Keely, comes whether you like it or not. The only thing you can do is learn to accept it, or run from it."

"But this isn't like that," Keely argued. She opened the bathroom door, and even though the night was warm they shivered in the rush of cooler air. All three girls ran across the hall to Keely's bedroom. She snapped on the light and Tia pulled the wooden blinds shut as they reached for their pajamas. "This isn't a decision anyone else can make for me. It isn't a decision anyone else _gets_ to make for me. Not Phil. Not my mother. Not my crazy teachers or my deadbeat dad, not my uncle or his new wife, not even you. Just me. It's my body and my reputation, my future and my life."

"Well said, Miss Broadcast Journalist," Tia replied, raising a foot to step into her underwear.

Via grabbed them and took them away. "You don't get to wear those tonight," she said. "You don't want to know what you'll look like in the morning if you let that material rub against your skin so soon after you shaved it."

"So what do we do?"

Via handed her a bottle. "Lotion well. No panties until tomorrow morning."

"I hate that word," Tia said.

"What, lotion?" Keely asked innocently, stealing some.

"No, and don't make me say it."

"Fine," Keely said, "be that way."

"You know," Via said thoughtfully, throwing herself down on Keely's plum-colored comforter, "I think it kind of is Phil's decision, too. Don't you think?"

"Not really." Keely sat on the end of her bed and tucked her legs up under her. "At this point, it's mine. I mean, I know he wants to."

"Did he say so?" Tia asked.

"No, but he didn't have to."

"Then how do you know?"

Keely thought back to Phil's awkward confession about what they had done thoughtlessly while she was under the influence of his mother's antidote. Her only regret was that her mind didn't completely remember everything, though if she closed her eyes her body remembered the strange, floating sensation and the heat of Phil's touch. There was no doubt in her mind that they probably would have slept together if she had been fully awake and cognizant.

"Trust me," she said, returning to the present. "I know."

Tia snickered, and Via rolled her eyes. "How do you know if you haven't asked him?"

"I just know, okay? I know because of how he touches me. How he _looks_ at me."

"Do you know how long he's willing to wait?" Via countered.

Keely smiled. "Longer than I'd ever make him," she said. "Trust me."


	10. Chapter 10

**Author's Note:** Sorry I haven't been around for a while - I don't really have a good excuse except that in my family we have four birthdays between Thanksgiving and mid-January, plus we celebrate Thanksgiving (duh), Solstice, Christmas, and New Year's. I also had finals to contend with, including a huge ugly paper about Emily Dickinson (and just _try_ finding something relevant to say about Emily Dickinson that hasn't already been said before, I dare you). Anyway, this chapter isn't as long as some of them have been so to apologize for being gone so long I thought I'd give y'all another little present. At the end there's a preview - a trailer, if you will - for something that's coming later on in the story. Just in case you thought this wasn't going anywhere. ;-)

* * *

"Where's Phil?"

"What did you say?" Mrs. Diffy turned and eyed her daughter. "Are you sick?"

Pim blinked her eyes in an attempt to look innocent. "Can't a girl wonder where her big brother is?"

"Not this girl," her mother said, handing her a cookie. "Not without a good reason."

Pim held the cookie away from Curtis and sighed. "Look," she said, "I think my bug jumped to his computer when I sent him an email the other day."

"Not Pim bug again." Curtis rolled his eyes and stole a handful of cookies.

"Curtis! Those aren't for you. They're a welcome-home present for Mrs. Teslow." Barbara shook her head as he crammed the cookies into his mouth, speckling the clean floor with sugary crumbs. "Pim," she continued, raising an eyebrow at her daughter, "tell me again. _How_ exactly did your bug get into Phil's computer?"

"Fine. I jacked some pieces from his computer the other day when I was looking for the stupid bug, but I put them back! Now I think it's in his hard drive, because it's not on _mine_."

"I think you're taking this whole thing a little too seriously, don't you?" her mother asked. "You're talking like it's alive now. Electronic bugs might be malicious, but they're just code. Robots are more alive than they are." Her mother arranged several tiers of cookies on a plate. "Isn't that pretty? I really hope Mandy Teslow and I can learn to be friends. Something tells me it might be a little difficult. Hand me the plastic wrap, will you, Pim?"

"Make Curtis do it."

"_Pim_."

Pim heaved a deep sigh and slid off the kitchen stool, trudging to the cabinet to get the wrap. "What good is having a caveman if he's not useful?"

"Curtis is plenty useful," Mrs. Diffy said. "And if you snuck into Phil's room to steal computer parts to begin with, why don't you just sneak back to look for your bug?"

Pim handed her mother the box of plastic wrap and took another cookie. "Because," she said, "Phil was so sick of people waltzing in and out of his room that he bribed Simon to booby-trap his door."

"I thought Simon liked you."

"He does, but I was stupid enough to tell him that he'd never be up to Pim standards when it comes to pranking. He took that as a challenge."

"As he rightly should," Barbara said. She tied a curl of ribbon around the wrapped plate. "Sweetie, maybe this is finally the lesson you need."

"Lesson in what?" Pim demanded.

"That you don't always have to win. Sometimes you have to let the other person win—that's what friendship is about."

"I'll file it away for future reference," Pim promised. "Now, will you tell me where Phil is?"

Barbara put the gift plate aside and ran a sponge over the crumby countertop. "It's Friday night, and he's with Keely at the movies."

"Well, when will he be back?"

"When the movie is over, I would presume."

"When will that be?"

"How should I know?"

Pim shook her head. "You're really not so good at this parenting thing, are you? Simon's dad won't let him out of the house unless he knows exactly where Simon will be, and with who."

"Whom." Lloyd corrected, coming in the back door.

"_And_ when he'll be back," Pim finished.

"That's certainly one way to do it," Barbara agreed, "and we could try it with you, if you'd like."

"That's not what I was implying," Pim said quickly.

"We could try it on Phil," Lloyd said, sitting down at the counter with a spray can of popcorn. He sprayed a bowlful, and the smell of melting butter brought Curtis back into the room. "Of course," he said, pausing with a handful of popcorn halfway to his mouth, "if we did, he and Keely would just probably spend all of their free time here. On the couch. Kissing."

"All right!" Pim snapped. "You made your point. Can we not dwell?"

Barbara kissed the top of her head and smoothed her long hair with an absent-minded touch. "That's my girl."

"Speaking of Blondie," Pim said, taking a handful of popcorn, "what was all that screaming about just after the sleepover? I forgot to ask."

"Keely was having some bad dreams," Barbara said, glancing at Lloyd, "and we tried to use the Medic to stop them. Unfortunately, her system reacted adversely to the cellular intrusion."

"Complete shutdown?"

"You sound way too happy about this."

Pim shrugged. "I hear it's painful."

"Quite." Her mother raised an eyebrow. "Would you like your entire system to suddenly shut down on the cellular level?"

"Not really."

"Well, then."

"Don't look at me like that!" Pim said, holding up her hands. "I assume everything is fine now, since she's off macking on my brother—a fact I'm still not okay with, by the way. In case anyone was wondering. Or cares what I think."

"Sweetie, we care," Barbara said. "And yes, as far as we know everything is fine now."

The doorbell rang, and Barbara jumped up. "Oh!" she said. "That's probably Mandy now. Curtis—into the garage! Pim, behave." She grabbed her plate of cookies and strode to the front door.

"Dad," Pim said, gazing after her mother and shaking her head, "tell me the truth. Are we ever going home?"

"Eventually, kiddo." He took his bowl of popcorn and peered around the corner. "Let's make a break for it and head upstairs. If there's any fireworks, I don't want to be a part of it."

"Right behind you, daddykins."

* * *

Keely blinked. Phil had said something, but she couldn't hear him over the crescendo of music inside the theatre. She raised her head from his shoulder and he put his lips next to her ear. "Do you want to go get ice cream after?" he whispered.

She considered. "Isn't it kind of late? I think the parlor's closed."

"Keely, Keely, Keely." He took her hand, turned it over, and kissed her palm. "It's morning already in Amsterdam."

"Does your mom expect you home?"

"No. Yours?"

She opened her mouth to remind him that her mother was gone for the week, but closed it again just as quickly. "Oh," she said, "I completely forgot she's coming home tonight."

Phil smirked. "I didn't. I have a great memory. It's part of what makes me so adorable."

She was about to disagree when the full import of that statement hit her and she slouched miserably in her seat. "_Shit_," she said, with feeling.

"What?"

She covered her eyes with her palms and dug her fingers into the fat, loose curls at her hairline. "My mother told me I was supposed to tell her where I was going from now on, when I went out with you. I didn't bother while she was gone, but I forgot to leave a note when we left tonight."

"Oops."

"You have no idea. She's going to kill me."

"Come on, Keel," he said. He slid his fingers around her delicate wrist and pulled her nearest hand away from her eyes. "It can't be that bad."

"I don't really know how bad it's going to be," she said, surrendering to the fact that she was going to be in trouble and there was nothing she could do about it now. Her mother had likely come home hours ago; it was too late to correct the mistake. She nestled down against Phil's shoulder again, firm and warm, and closed her eyes. "She's never been like this before."

"Like what?" he murmured, his voice vibrating in his throat against her skin. The theatre seats had the kind of armrests that couldn't be raised out of the way, and Keely felt the sharp plastic hard against her hip as she tried to press herself as close to Phil as she possibly could.

"It's hard to explain," she said.

"Try."

"I don't know how." She let one of her hands slip under his thin t-shirt, resting against the smooth skin and taut muscle. "She was always cool, you know? But not like your mom. It wasn't like she ever understood how I felt or even wanted to. It was more like we had this unspoken agreement that we wouldn't bother each other and neither of us would rock the boat. So I never threw a fit when she had to work late or go off on business retreats and training trips, and she never asked where I was going on Friday nights or when I'd be back."

"So what changed?" Phil was trying very hard to pay attention, but the distraction of her hand against his skin, her thumb moving slowly back and forth against his side, made it very difficult to concentrate on anything else. He glanced at the movie screen, but he hadn't been paying attention to it for quite some time and couldn't make sense of anything that was happening.

"I don't know!" She shifted restlessly against him, and Phil placed his mouth against her hair. "It was that day, when she came over during your un-pool party. It was like somebody had replaced my mother with someone else's. The way she looked at me…" Keely stopped talking abruptly, remembering the bewildering look in her mother's eyes when they had spotted each other across the expanse of the Diffy back porch that afternoon.

Was it betrayal? Was that what she had seen in her mother's eyes? Disappointment? Certainly there had been a dim kind of recognition there, a realization of something long denied. She had felt like a little girl again, under those eyes, like she had done something awful without realizing it and her mother had seen it happen. "She asked me if we were sleeping together," she said quietly, her voice barely audible in the noisy theatre.

"What did you say?"

"I said no, of course. I'm still not sure she believed me."

"Is it so awful that she thinks that way?"

"Yes!" Keely snapped. "You've got this great family, Phil—weird, but great—that doesn't think it's the end of the world that we're going out. My mom isn't like that. I thought we had a good don't-ask-don't-tell policy worked out, but something changed. She doesn't trust me, Phil, and I don't know how to make her see that I'm not some terrible kid."

"I'm sure she doesn't think you're a terrible kid," he said, smiling against her hair.

"I'm not so sure."

Phil had nothing to say to that. He held her and let her hide against his shoulder, knowing that there was nothing else he could do to help her. Nothing he could say would make her feel any better at this point. This was something she was going to have to work out with her mother, and it was better if he didn't get involved at all. Interfering was a sure way, he had learned, to screw things up. That didn't mean, he thought as he gazed at the blond head tucked against his arm, that he didn't wish he could.

* * *

"She's going to be grounded until graduation," Mandy growled, pacing before the windows in the Diffy's living room. "_College_ graduation."

"I'm sure she just forgot to leave a note for you," Mrs. Diffy said, trying to soothe the irate woman. "New rules take a little time to get used to, you know."

Mandy Teslow dropped into a chair. "I just don't know what to do anymore!" she said, clasping her hands together tightly. "I never thought I'd be having these problems—not with _Keely_. She's always been so responsible, so good…"

"Whoever said she wasn't anymore?" Barbara said. "Children grow up, Mrs. Teslow; that's what they do. Arguments about what kind of cookie goes into their lunchbox turn into different struggles. It's our job as parents to make sure that they have the freedom to make their own decisions—and mistakes—and the assurance that we'll always be there to help them when they need it."

"But she does need it!" Mandy snapped, and jumped to her feet again. She was too unsettled to sit still. "She needs me to set limits because she obviously can't do it for herself."

Barbara stirred sugar into a cup of coffee and tried to calm the anger she felt rising inside. How this woman could sit there and accuse her sweet, cheerful daughter of not being responsible she couldn't fathom. "I know all you want is for Keely to be safe," she said, though in truth she wasn't sure at all that Keely's safety was Mandy's primary concern. "But when you hold teenagers too tightly, all you do is push them farther away."

"That's a risk I'm just going to have to take." Mandy paused in her pacing. "You can't know what it's like."

"Oh?"

"I mean, it must be different with boys. I know you have a girl too, but she's younger and you're not having this same struggle with her yet."

"How do you think it's any different with Phil and I than it is with you and Keely?" Barbara asked.

"I don't know! It's just different. It's always been different with boys."

"Not having one yourself," Barbara said, "how would you know?"

"Boys have less responsibility," Mandy said, coming to perch on the loveseat. She took her cup of untasted coffee in her hands. It had gone cold. "They have less to lose."

"How so?" Barbara was trying to keep hold of her temper, but it wasn't easy. She was usually very difficult to bother, but this other woman's constant insinuation that all boys in general—and Phil in particular—were irresponsible vagabonds was wearing her cheerful nature down. "Phil's a good boy, Mrs. Teslow, and I'm not just saying that because I'm his mother. He's always been special to me, and it's just as hard for me to see him growing up as it is for you to see Keely doing the same. But I take pride in seeing what an amazing person he's growing into, and I know that my job now is to guide, not to hover. Don't you think I sometimes wish he were still running around with his underwear over his jeans, pretending to be a superhero? Of course I do! Sometimes when he comes through that door after school I want to give him graham crackers and peanut butter again, just like I did when he was five, and help him wash his hands and his little freckled face afterwards. But I can't do that! Time doesn't work that way."

"Are you trying to tell me you think Keely's too old to punish for breaking the rules?"

"Yes!" Mrs. Diffy threw her hands up in the air. "Punishment should have gone out the door when she was twelve! _Consequences_, however, are a different story. The world is full of consequences; they're not just parental inventions. Teenagers respect consequences much more than punishments."

Mandy Teslow dropped her head into her hands for a long moment. She didn't know how she felt about this other woman yet, this mother who seemed to love her children deeply and yet let them run about with a much freer rein than she wanted to give Keely. It didn't help that they were almost forced to interact, since their children were dating. She didn't think Barbara Diffy was the kind of person she would ordinarily have chosen to be friends with, had she the option.

But…in a strange way, this notion of consequences made sense. And if trying to look at it from somebody else's perspective might make Keely listen to her mother instead of running off with that dark-haired boy, Mandy was willing to try. She looked up at the taller woman. "What do you suggest?" she said finally.

"Let's think about this rationally," Barbara suggested, hopeful that she was at last finally getting somewhere. "You're upset with Keely for not letting you know where she was going to be when she left the house. That's a rational argument."

"Well at least we agree about something," Mandy said. She sipped at her tepid coffee and made a face.

"The obvious option would be, as you suggested, to take away her freedom to leave the house _for a while_ since that was what the broken rule was about. But I think we can do a little better than that. Making kids stay home only makes them upset, it doesn't really teach them anything."

"At least I'd know where she was," Mandy argued.

"For a little while, certainly, but you can't keep her grounded forever."

"Watch me."

Barbara pretended she hadn't heard that last comment. She tapped her lips thoughtfully with a finger. "You know, Phil told me a few days ago that you were worried he and Keely were having sex."

Mandy colored. "And why shouldn't I be?" she demanded. "Are you going to next try and tell me I should let them do that, too?"

"Mrs. Teslow, if Keely wants to have sex she's going to do it no matter what you tell her—and it has nothing to do with my son, either. It's about her growing curiosity about herself and her body, and it's natural."

Mandy narrowed her eyes suspiciously. "Is your son sleeping with my daughter?" she asked.

"Not as far as I know," Barbara said, relieved that she could truthfully answer the question. "And Phil talks to me about more things than you might expect."

"But you're not positive." Mandy jumped up and began pacing again. "Good god, what if they are? What if he gets her pregnant? Her future will be ruined, and he'll just run off like teenage fathers do, and—"

"Whoa there!" Barbara put up a hand. "Mrs. Teslow, they're not even having sex and you're worried about a pregnancy that hasn't even happened. Are you listening to yourself?" She bit back her next words as an idea occurred to her. "Is that what you're really so upset about? That they might have sex and then get pregnant?"

"Yes!" Mandy snapped. "What have I been sitting here telling you all night?"

A slow smile spread over Barbara's face. "I think I have an excellent consequence," she said. "It's unusual, I admit, but it addresses your fear and, best of all, it'll be for both of them."

Mrs. Teslow paused. "What is it?" she asked suspiciously.

"Phil has a cousin in college. She has a new baby we haven't met yet, what with everyone's schedules being so busy. I'm sure she'd love a few days off—what would you say if we brought the baby down for a while and let Phil and Keely see what hard work it is to take care of a baby full-time?"

"She had that lesson in seventh grade," Mandy said, but her voice was thoughtful.

"A bag of flour isn't much of a baby, and seventh grade was a long time ago in teenage years," Mrs. Diffy argued. "We can set Keely up in our guest room for a few days and Mr. Diffy and I will be here to make sure the baby is taken care of properly. What do you think? After a couple of nights with no sleep, I bet they'll think twice before doing anything that might get them stuck with a baby for real."

Mandy considered. "You know," she said slowly, "that actually sounds like a pretty good idea."

"Excellent!" Mrs. Diffy beamed. "Why don't you go get a bag together for her, and I'll call Phil's cousin and let her know what's going on. I'm sure she'll be so happy to have a few days of vacation!"

* * *

_And, as promised, a preview of things to come..._

Keely slowly opened her eyes, and Phil stilled his hands to watch her. She breathed in, filling her lungs with a breath he could almost feel against his own skin. Very deliberately, eyes locked with his, she drew her shirt over her head. Phil swallowed, his mouth suddenly dry. He was having a very difficult time not breaking eye contact to look down, but he was determined not to ruin the tension Keely was building.

"Are we really going to do this?" she whispered, and in her voice he heard the uncertainty he had heard in her breath, an uncertainty that didn't translate well to her hands.

"We'll never get a better chance," Phil said, his gaze flicking back and forth from her cloudy eyes to her mouth. He was close enough to feel her breath on his cheek, close enough to see the sweep of individual eyelashes as she blinked. "But that doesn't mean we have to."

"Do you want to?" There was no volume to her voice, nothing but air formed by her lips. He saw the words more than he heard them.

"Do you?" he asked quietly. He wondered if she really expected an answer to her question, wondered if there could be any doubt at this point that he wanted her. Careful not to startle her, he reached up with one finger and traced the delicate line of her bare clavicle. He could see quick, tense breaths fluttering under his fingertip. She was warm, her skin pink and cream, like the fragile blush in the very center of a strawberry.

"I…I asked you first," she said, fighting to keep her eyes open.

"Actually," Phil said, running his fingertips over her smooth breastbone, "I believe I asked you first. Months ago."

TBC...


	11. Chapter 11

Well, hello! I bet you all thought I had deserted you for good. I really didn't mean to, but sometimes life gets in the way. Meaning, I had a baby. I know, weird, huh? Especially considering where in the story I left off. I'm planning to continue, maybe even finish, now that my son doesn't need 99.9 of my attention anymore. This is just a little scene to get going again - the hijinks (and mystery - don't forget Keely's mysterious dreams! Yes, they're coming back into the plot) will return in the next full chapter. I apologize for being gone sooo long, it really wasn't intentional!

* * *

"You did what now?" Phil stared at his mother.

"Relax, Phil, it's only for a couple of days."

"No no. You don't seem to understand. This isn't funny anymore." Phil rubbed his head, his dark hair sticking out in all directions. "Why can't you all just leave us alone?"

"Come on, Phil," Keely said, trying not to grin at how uncomfortable he seemed. "It sounds like it could be fun."

"Fun?" he demanded. "Screaming baby equals not-fun. Do you want me to run the equation for you?"

"You know I'm no good at algebra," she said, waving him off. She turned to his mother. "How does this work, Mrs. Diffy?"

"Very simple," she said, and led the way to the guest room upstairs. "You, my dear, will be staying in here for the weekend." She held out a pair of Virtu-Goggles. "I'll load the program for you. The rules are, two hours on, ten minutes' break. Think you can handle that?"

Keely took the goggles, but looked disappointed. "I was sort of hoping for a real baby," she said.

Barbara Diffy snorted. "Honey, it's not that we don't trust you, but babies are a lot of hard work. That's what this whole weekend is supposed to teach you, you know. And you have to be careful with them."

"You know how seventh-graders get flour-sack babies to take care of?" Phil said, leaning in the doorway, "well, in the future, this is how we learn this 'valuable life lesson.' I've already done it, but now it looks like I'll have to do it again."

Mrs. Diffy patted his cheek. "It won't hurt you to have a reminder," she said.

"I don't need a reminder to be careful; it's not like one of these will just show up by accident."

"Well, it will make Mandy Teslow feel better, and that's good enough for me," she said, and shooed Phil off to his own room with his own pair of Virtu-Goggles. "Now, Keely—during the day, you and Phil will get a ten-minute break for every two hours you wear the Virtu-Goggles. I'd recommend getting comfortable in the armchair or on the bed. At night—lucky you—you get to keep them on. Remember, the baby could wake up at any time and start crying."

"How old is the baby?" Keely asked, settling herself in the overstuffed armchair next to the bed.

"Oh, newborn, of course," Mrs. Diffy said. "You know, the ones that don't sleep through the night." She smiled and waved before closing the door. "Good luck!"


End file.
